December 27, 2006
General Advice for Students who want me to read their Poems
I’m prone to be lavish in my encouragement, so even in classes that are not connected with the workshops I sometimes teach I often have students handing me thick batches of poems. “Be brutal,” they say, with great hope showing in their faces. I have a hard time being brutal, except when the writer has a huge ego and a preemptive disdain for all but the highest praise. Sometimes it all starts to wear me down, though, and I feel like I am having to say the same things again and again. So I decided to type up this sheet of comments to hand out before I accept the poems:
1. Read some first.
2. Stop a complete stranger on the street and launch right in with an intense, one-sided
description of your “feelings.” See how that works for you.
3. If all ambiguity is poetic, we have no need of poets.
4. Don’t put that word in there that you just saw for the first time a few minutes ago.
5. Get away from windows.
6. Don’t sing along like you do when you have headphones on and don’t think anybody is listening.
7. The anger management poem is, like, more helpful to the cause of your anger.
8. If you start with crap, it remains so–even when you
tease it out
into bits and
scatter
it around.
9. If you blush when you see the words “penis” and “vagina,” hold off on your plan to exploit the untapped power you have discovered.
10. If you only write for yourself, why am I reading your poems?
11. Your cat won’t like the poem about him either.
12. If you can just say it, it doesn’t need to be a poem.
comments
That’s frigging great, Daryl (but, then, that’s just, like, my opinion, man). Please let us know whether (or not) it makes a dent in any thick skulls — or, better yet, proves to be just what’s needed by someone gifted but ignorant.
FANTASTIC
Especially the last line.
Rockin’! Paris Review might want to print this on the very first page inside the magazine [before the 800 pages of advertisements that follow] [and many of which are probably more intelligent than the writing which follows].