Catherine Pierce

The Workshop: In September 1991 I sent a memo to all Writing majors and minors at Susquehanna explaining my intent to form and run a semester-long poetry workshop. In the email, I requested that all interested parties anonymously submit to my campus mailbox a brief paragraph stating why they would like to participate in the workshop, and what they hoped to accomplish from it, along with a writing sample of one or two poems. After reviewing all applications, I contacted the workshop members. They were: Adam Cole (sophomore), Sarah Farbo (senior), Roxanne Halpine (junior), Lindsey Wise (freshman), Cori Martin (junior), and Amy Harper (sophomore). After a few weeks, scheduling conflicts caused both Lindsey and Amy to leave the workshop, leaving us with a group of five people total, including myself. Then after a month, Erin Aults (sophomore) expressed a serious interest and, having the space from the two who left, we added her to the group. The workshop met every Wednesday afternoon for an hour and a half, and continued until mid-December.

Chapter 1:

Creative Writing -- A Little Background

Before going into all the nitty-gritty details, it would probably be helpful to offer a bit of background on this concept we all now know as "creative writing." It wasn't always called that, nor was it always a recognized part of academic life. In D.G. Myer's book The Elephants Teach, he chronicles writing's role in the academic world from its emergence until the present. According to Myers, the teaching of writing in the university setting began in the 1880s and continued to develop through WWII as "an experiment in education" (4). The original goal wasn't to produce poets and fiction writers, but rather to approach the study of literature from a different angle; up until this time, it had only been approached "historically and linguistically" (4).

As time went on, social factors helped make creative writing a more acceptable part of the university curriculum. America's competitiveness with the Soviet Union spurred a demand for more education, and learning about creative writing, Myers claims, became one more way for America to gain the academic edge they wanted. Eventually creative writing "could be pursued for its own sake — free from any other institutional responsibilities" (5). While the last part of Myers's statement somewhat diminishes creative writing's importance in the grand scheme of academia (in most cases, both undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs still require substantial literature and language study), it also shows how far creative writing has come in order to be accepted at the university level as a subject worthy of being taught, on par with biology or French or literature.

The term "creative writing" was not officially coined until the 1920s, when Hugh Mearns, a "progressive educator" and junior high teacher began writing-based classes as an experimental alternative to the standard grammar, spelling, and literature (101). The idea behind his experiment was that students should be taught something that would appeal directly to them. The experiment proved successful. In his classroom, Mearns ran some of the first academic poetry workshops, encouraging students to directly connect to what they knew and felt. About children's natural impulse to write, Mearns said:

Children seem to be driven by an inner necessity of putting forth something...Their impulse at its best is to place something in the outside world that is already (or almost already) in their inside world of perceiving, thinking, feeling; they measure their success or failure by the final resemblance of the thing done to the thing imagined. (qtd. In Myers 108).

Mearns's statement, although meant in regard to children, can be transferred, I believe, to anyone who has the drive necessary to be a writer. Children and adults alike, if they feel their subject strongly enough, are consumed by a need to say exactly what it is that they want to express. Whether they choose to say it literally or not is a topic for Chapter Six: Truth in Writing, but the point is that, in his early workshops for young people, Mearns touched on a key issue that is central to workshops being conducted today — the writer must strive, above all else, to connect as closely as possible to the truth of his or her situation.

Creative writing, as a concept, obviously existed well before it was being integrated into the curriculum of major universities. But its inclusion in academia suggests two very important things: one, that writing has earned a place of (somewhat) higher regard in society than it may have perhaps had sixty years ago; and two, that writing is, in fact, a craft to be both taught and developed. And on of the key methods of teaching writing is, of course, through the workshop.

Chapter 2:

The Worshop -- How It All Started, and Where It Is Now

The concept of a creative writing workshop, and the origin of the term, emerged in the early 20th century at Harvard University when a man named George Pierce Baker started teaching a graduate course in advanced composition for playwrights. Over a period of years, the course changed directions from being strictly focused on composition to striving to help young playwrights with revising and improving their own works. In his course, which came to be called "47 Workshop," Baker's goal became, "by showing the inexperienced dramatist how experienced dramatists have solved problems similar to his own, to shorten a little the time of his apprenticeship" (qtd. In Myers 69). Baker's goal has since been incorporated into countless workshops and creative writing classes, although I would revise his statement, removing "to shorten a little the time of his apprenticeship," and adding "to illuminate for him or her the difficulty and the satisfaction of the road ahead." I change Baker's last few words because I personally don't believe that a good writer ever stops being an "apprentice." Every writer is constantly learning from other writers, as we'll see in Chapter Four: The Importance of Reading, and thus the time of apprenticeship is never really over. This aside, however, Baker's workshop sounds remarkably like workshops in existence today, the most famous of which is the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

The Iowa Writer's Workshop at Iowa University was the first graduate program to accept creative thesis work as part of the requirement for an advanced degree (Conroy 80). Over the years, the program has grown in recognition and stature, and has taught some of the most renowned writers in America. Frank Conroy currently runs the Workshop, and in his essay, "The Writer's Workshop," he discusses the techniques he uses to achieve the most productive workshop environment. I used a handful of the same techniques in the poetry workshop I ran last fall.

The first technique Conroy uses is silence. During the workshopping session, the person whose poem or story is being workshopped is asked to remain silent, a technique I wholeheartedly support. Although the writer may have to suppress the urge to defend or explain him or herself, this is actually a good thing. As Conroy says, "If there is a tension between the writer's intentions for the text and what the text, standing alone, appears to actually be doing to the readers, that is a tension the writer should face and think about" (81). In the workshop I ran this past fall, the discussion that happened during the writer's time of silence was often the most productive part of the session. During this time, the writer could (or had to) hear exactly how her or his poem was perceived, including misjudgments in narrator, place, circumstance, etc. As frustrating as it may be to have to sit there while people misread the work — and believe me that there were times when I could see the frustration boiling as the writer gripped the arms of her chair, or gnawed at his pen — the frustration is key to understanding what needs to be done in revision. Nothing is a stronger impetus for revision than having to listen to someone read your poem about abortion as if it were actually about a birthday party.

Conroy also talks about the importance of "resist[ing] the temptation to go through [the text] and talk about the author" (81). In his workshops, students are encouraged to base their criticism on the text as if it were merely a text by any writer, not by the person sitting in the room. The text is to be studied in and of itself. While I see the value of this in more advanced workshops (providing this sort of distance would also allow criticism to be necessarily harsher), for the sake of more introductory workshops like the one I ran, I think that discussing the author in addition to the text is sometimes a really valuable technique. It is important for writers, especially young one, to be aware of patterns in their work, in terms of style, subject matter, and language. One writer in our group, Sarah, tends to write poetry that is much more obscure and image-reliant than that of the other poets in the group. During each session, she would sit in silence while people made comments like "I don't get this part at all," or "what does this word have to do with what's going on? What is going on?" Her language was strong and often beautiful, but her poems tended to be so deeply personalized that no one else could access them. This became a topic of discussion in the workshop — without any vindictiveness, someone would bring up the issue of obscurity in her work, or Sarah herself would solicit advice to help her out with what she knew was her biggest weakness. By the end of the semester, Sarah had gained a much greater awareness of herself as a poet, largely because we did go beyond the text and focus on the writer. We did so without harshness, but we did it just the same, and the workshop was all the stronger for it.

Conroy also points out the importance of specificity in the workshop process. To this, I say amen. Nothing is more frustrating in a workshop than to have your poem not only misunderstood but also weakly criticized. In my workshop, this was something we had to work around — at first, most of the criticism being given was more general: "I really like this," "This stanza doesn't feel right," etc. Comments like these are not only extremely frustrating to receive, but are also just plain unhelpful. They offer no specific place from which to start revising. Conroy says, "[I]f there is some large, abstract problem with a story, or a series of problems — 'It's thin.' 'It lacks energy.' 'It lacks narrative drive.' 'It's frustrating to read.' Etc., etc., —the seeds of the problem can always be found at the microlevel of language, the words and sentences on the page" (85). The more specific workshoppers can make their comments, the more helpful it is to the writer. By the end of the workshop, comments had moved from "I like this" to "In the third stanza, the fourth line feels off rhythmically, I think it's the word 'notice,' and two lines after that, I don't think that metaphor gets across what you want it to." Specificity is the key to achieving successful revision. It may sound like a bad fortune cookie, but the fact of the matter is that the more nit-picky the comments can be, the better it is for the writer. And for the reader, too, I would argue. Learning to be specific critiquer helps to make that person more aware of similar problems for triumphs in his/her own writing as well.

One of the workshop's best qualities, however, is not solely the criticism it allows writers to provide and hear, but the forum for discussion that it gives writers. Writers, like any craftspeople, must deal with a lot of questions and issues as they try to understand what exactly it is they must do to succeed at their craft. And what better way to learn about these issues than to be surrounded by a group of other people questioning these things every bit as intensely? Although there are countless important issues for writers to think about, for the purpose of this essay I've chosen and talked about a key handful that I think every writer faces, and the workshop is the perfect forum in which to examine them.

Chapter 3:

Can Writing Be Taught?

This might sound like a redundant question, considering I've already stated my point of view on the whole thing by calling writing a craft and dignifying it in an academic setting, etc. — but it goes beyond that. In The Elephants Teach, Myers paraphrases a quote by Witter Bynner: "Poetry can be taught — but only to poets, not to anyone else" (99). This echoes my feelings precisely.

Wait a minute, you're saying — how can you possibly presume to decide who is and isn't a poet? Well, I can't. Or at least I can't expect anyone else to necessarily take my definition to heart. But for my own purposes, Bynner's statement to me describes a person who has two key traits: one, a true, deep passion for writing; and two, the ability to work words.

By "a true, deep passion for writing," I don't mean someone who simply enjoys reading other people's works — I mean someone who absolutely has no choice but to write. Whether that person writes for four hours every day or twenty minutes couple times a week is not important initially; discipline can be cultivated. What is important is the driving desire to do it, to put pen to paper regardless of time constraints, other responsibilities, etc. William Faulkner said this of people who create excuses for why they don't make the time to write: "I've heard a lot of people say, 'Well, if I were not married and had children I would be a writer.' I've heard people say, 'If I could just stop doing this I would be a writer.' I don't agree with that. I think if you're going to write, you're going to write and nothing will stop you" (24). Faulkner tells it like it is — there are no excuses in writing. Certainly anyone has a day when, for whatever reason, they simply cannot sit down and write — but that is a day's excuse, not a lifetime's. If someone is inherently a writer, then she is a writer because of her passion and the fact that, ultimately, she has no choice.

"The ability to work words" is somewhat glib phrase for what is really a very serious thing. I don't just mean someone who is a good spoken-word or rap performer, although either of those people could be remarkable poets in their own right. What I mean by the phrase is someone who is truly aware of language, its nuances, and its power. A writer certainly knows the basics of language, the groundwork of grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and so on — rules are made to be broken, but it is best to break only rules that you know exist, so that the rule-breaking is intentional and not a mere accident. But "the ability to work words" goes beyond that. It includes a way of handling language to make it work for, instead of against, what you're saying. Look, for example, at Sharon Olds's poem "I Could Not Tell':

I Could Not Tell

I could not tell I had jumped off that bus,
That bus in motion, with my child in my arms,
Because I did not know it. I believed my own story:
I had fallen, or the bus had started up
When I had one foot in the air.

I would not remember the tightening of my jaw,
The rage that I'd missed my stop, the leap
Into the air, the clear child
Gazing about her in the air as I plunged
To one knee on the street, scraped it, twisted it,
The bus skidding to a stop, the driver
Jumping out, my daughter laughing
Do it again.

I have never done it
Again. I have been very careful.
I have kept an eye on that nice young mother
Who suddenly threw herself
Off the moving vehicle
Onto the stopped street, her life
In her hands, her life's life in her hands.
(53)

Note the way that the poem's language rushes along, entirely clear but rapidly paced, mirroring the franticness of the situation being described. Note also the precise words Olds uses to capture each detail: "the clear child/gazing about her." This is an example of making the words work exactly as they should. A writer, to expand on Bynner's above statement, does not have to be as advanced a writer as Sharon Olds in order to learn and be taught. He should, however, possess an inkling of the same ability to work words.

If a would-be writer does not possess these two qualities, even if he possesses one but not the other, then I have serious doubts as to whether or not he is enough of a writer to be taught. It may sound harsh, but, although a great many aspects of writing can be learned, there are certain things that simply cannot, and to try may only result in ultimate frustration. If these two qualities are in place, however, then I believe — and bear with the convolution of this statement — that the writer is in fact enough of a writer to be taught writing. I believe, in fact, that the writer deserves to be taught writing. There are, of course, many writers who have achieved greatness without engaging in workshops or classes, among them Faulkner, Hemingway, Homer, Shakespeare — but to me, it really does seem beneficial to provide a young writer with the support and criticism that he or she needs in order to grow artistically. Joyce Carol Oates puts it well when she says of writing fiction, "[I]nspiration and energy and even genius are rarely enough to make 'art': for prose fiction is also a craft, and craft must be learned, whether by accident or design" (13). Even Faulkner has his Sherwood Anderson, Hemingway his Gertrude Stein. A good writer will most likely never become great if she or he is not guided, criticized, and encouraged by other writers who care every bit as much about the task at hand.

It is because I believe that writing can be taught, at least to writers, that I choose and have chosen to invest so much of my time in it. It is why I chose to write this particular essay, and why I chose to orchestrate the workshop. Every bit of time I spend around some aspect of writing, whether sitting in a classroom, running a workshop, researching this paper, reading another poet, or writing myself, I am teaching and being taught. Every bit is valuable.

Chapter 4:

The Importance of Reading

Speaking of teaching and learning writing...what better way to learn than to read the experts? In the workshop I ran in the fall, we started each session with a healthy dose of good writing, supplied by whatever poets the participants chose to bring. There were no requirements on length, style, time period, or anything else — the only requirement was that whoever supplied the poem loved it. We heard from a wide range of writers, everyone from John Donne to Emily Dickinson to Joy Harjo, and each time we listened to another poem, we all grew that much more as writers. Each new poem opened up another possibility, another potential topic or style to explore.

Here I'll use Sarah again as an example, because her situation lends itself so well to topic of reading. A professor gave her a book of poems by Gerald Stern to read, in the hopes that reading someone completely unlike herself would help her to develop another aspect to her writing. Here is one of Stern's poems — note its narrative quality and specificity of detail:

Grapefruit (excerpt)

I'm eating breakfast even if it means standing
in front of the sink and tearing at the grapefruit,
even if I'm leaning over to keep the juices
away from my chest and stomach and ever if a spider
is hanging from my ear and a wild flea
is crawling down my leg. My window is wavy
and dirty. There is a wavy tree outside
with pitiful leaves in front of the rusty fence
and there is a patch of useless rhubarb, the leaves
bent over, the stalks too large and bitter for eating,
and there is some lettuce and spinach too old for picking
beside the rhubarb. This is the way the saints
ate, only they dug for thistles, the feel
of thorns in the throat it was a blessing, my pity
it knows no bounds. There is a thin tomato plant
inside a rolled-up piece of wire, the worms
are already there, the birds are bored. In time
I'll stand beside the rolled-up fence with tears
of gratitude in my eyes. I'll hold a puny
pinched tomato in my open hand,
I'll hold it to my lips.

--from This Time, New and Selected Poems

Prior to reading Stern, Sarah's poetry tended to be sparse — the poems were always rich with detail, but often the way that detail was presented provided the reader with very little to work with on a literal level. Her images were strong, but there was little narration to tie the images together. After spending some time with Stern's works, Sarah began experimenting with a style that was very unlike her earlier work. Her poem "it was new york and beautiful snowing" perfectly exemplifies the way Stern's poetry influenced her. Note her usage of sentence-structure lines; prior to this, I had rarely seen Sarah's poems use this format. Though still true to her own image-heavy style, this excerpt from the poem reveals the amount of influence Sarah allowed Stern's poems to have on her.

It was new york and beautifully snowing
eyelashes curled between 5th avenue and the rockette's long legs
small girls with red flowered caps avoided the steaming grates —
half mittened hands clenched bigger ones and eyes rolled
themselves over at all the large images — bag ladies with crazy
roasting with the grey sky, graffiti growing like a wild jungle
everywhere but up.
they stop in front of a toy store window
plastic blue trucks and brown mummified teddy bears
smile coldly through the warm yellow lights hanging, like
space-ships beside their invisible brains
"daddy, daddy can I please have one?" her lips fight hard
against the noise the crowd pressing them like tattoos into the glass

This poem is an illuminating example of the power of reading. Had Sarah not read the Gerald Stern, chances are she would never — or at least, not for a while — have gone in this direction with her poetry. As the semester went on, she discovered a sort of middle ground between her original sparse poetry and this experimentally dense style. Having both ends of the spectrum to work from, her poetry grew stylistically.

Reading as a writer is vital. Without reading, it is impossible to gain new perspectives on style, subject, voice, and countless other topics. It is not only that reading will give a writer a logical new outlook ('ah, I see, he uses a more prose-like line structure in order to establish a conversational tone'), but it will give a new intuitive insight as well. Chances are that when Sarah decided to experiment with a more Stern-like style, she didn't set out to create longer lines, necessarily, but she had internalized his voice and allowed it to come out through her own by instinct. Both types of learning are equally important. Joyce Carol Oates gives this advice to writers: "Read widely, read enthusiastically, be guided by instinct and not design. For if you read, you need not become a writer, but if you hope to become a writer, you must read" (20).

But there is still a whole other part to the reading-as-a-writer argument. It is the issue of experience. Young writers are constantly being told, in workshops and writing classes, to write about what they know. In order to write well, so the argument goes, one must only write about something that he or she has experienced or can very clearly imagine experiencing. Clearly imagining, for the sake of writing, includes feeling. But this is very limiting advice for a lot of people! What if I want to write about domestic cruelty but all I have known is the kindness of my family? Or what if I want to write about great love and familial comfort, but was kicked out of my house at fourteen? Well, if fiction and poetry are written well enough, they will ring so true that reading them becomes a type of experience in itself. Through reading, we transcend our own experiences and instead use our emotions to plug into another's. Faulkner, when asked in an interview to give advice to young writers, said, "The most important thing is insight, that is, to be — curiosity — to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does." The interviewer then asked him how he would suggest the young writer gains this insight, and if he recommends he gain it through experience. Faulkner replied, "Yes, and then the greatest part of experience is in the books, to read. To read and to read and to read and to read. To watch people, to have — to never judge people. To watch people, what they do, without intolerance. Simply to learn why it is they did what they did" (192). Experience through reading — what better affirmation of the connection between writing and living?

Reading is not something superfluous, something frivolous to do in leisure time. For a writer, reading must, by necessity, be as much a part of the daily routine as brushing teeth and writing for that two hour chunk of time before bed. Without reading, the writer has very few places to come from, and nowhere new to go.

Chapter 5:

Writer's Block

For the longest time, I viewed the phrase "writer's block" as a big cop-out. Either you're writing or you're not, and if you're not, either you're not trying or you can't and if you're not trying, that's your own damn fault, and if you can't, well, that's really no one's fault but your own as well. I viewed the phrase this way, that is, until I got knocked down by the total frustration of the writer's block beast. This started happening last spring. I was abroad, with plenty of free time and a plethora of amazing new stimuli. I should have been churning out three poems a day, I thought. Unfortunately, absolutely nothing would come. Nothing. I would sit down to write and I'd end up penning something utterly trite about landscape, or something whiny about home. And suddenly I believed in the existence of writer's block.

Writer's block is a very bad feeling. It is extremely frustrating to know beyond a doubt that you have something vitally important to say, but to not be able to access the words to capture and represent it. Louise Gluck describes the pain:

It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment — the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It's like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims toward it, it backs away. (16)

It may sound like a dramatic way to describe it, but I believe Gluck's description entirely — there is nothing light about the frustration of writer's block.

Writer's block, however, does not come out of nowhere — I do still believe part of my initial outlook toward the concept, which is that no matter what, there's really no cause except yourself. Natalie Goldberg, in her book Writing Down the Bones, describes this cause as the internal censor, or the editor (8). The internal censor is the little voice inside all of us that says, "No, that's not right, that sounds weird, it didn't happen like that, cross it out, do it over." The internal censor is the cause of the writer's block dilemma — we put expectations and limitations on ourselves as writers, and are therefore unable to produce anything at all. I often feel that if I could just give myself permission to write something truly bad, something really good might eventually start flowing in its place. But allowing ourselves to write something that we know is truly bad is often a very difficult thing to do. Frank Conroy validates the importance of allowing for bad writing: "[Students} mistakenly think that only their strong work is significant and that their weak work is a total waste of time. They fear being exposed as impostors...All the work is necessary to move process forward, hence it is all valuable" (89). Allowing ourselves as writers to believe this advice is the first step toward getting rid of writer's block.

Natalie Goldberg suggests a number of writing exercises whose primary purpose is to keep the writer writing at all costs. Her rules for writing exercises are as follows:

1. Keep your hand moving. (Don't pause to reread the line you have just written. That's stalling and trying to get control of what you're saying.)

2. Don't cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn't mean to write, leave it.)

3. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, and grammar. (Don't even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.)

4. Lose control.

5. Don't think. Don't get logical.

6. Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.) (8)

In the workshop I ran this past fall, we utilized a lot of Golberg's techniques in our attempt to squelch the constant threat of writer's block. Each week, I assigned the group a different writing assignment, and though they could do whatever they wanted in the writing itself, they were asked to follow the six rules listed above. The point was for everyone to get past his or her own internal censor and break through to whatever raw, fresh words might be hiding just under the surface.

The exercises given each week ranged in type from simple topics to more involved assignments. One week I gave them the topic "trains." I told them to go home, and sometime over the next week, sit down for ten undisturbed minutes and write without stopping, starting from the idea of trains. Whether they chose to literally write about an experience with a train, or rather to mentally travel from trains to movies to a great-grandfather who was an alcoholic and had acted in silent films was their own decision. The only requirement was that they keep writing and see where the assignment took them. If they got stuck for a minute, they were to write the word "trains" over and over until they thought of something else — anything to keep the hand moving and the internal editor turned off. The exercises that emerged that week — some even turned into poems — ranged in topic from train rides in Italy to oral sex to peanut butter. Here is an example of the "train" writing exercise done by Roxanne Halpine:

The night we took the train to philly was two nights before the first time we took our shirts off in your bed, and I was thinking that night on the train of the way you push your glasses up your nose and the quiet way you smile. We ride the train w/ mike and dan & jerry, who knew where they were going, and we were just sort of along for the ride, suburban station creeped me out, its dirty emptiness, and our whole excursion, from train to head shop to laser show to train, seemed shady to me, and most of it kind of was. I remember it was mistily raining and the edges of my bellbottoms got wet. I was wearing the rainbowstriped shirt. On the train ride home that night, I saw a man with the biggest head I've ever seen. His forehead was abnormally large and I couldn't stop staring at his deformity, till w/ his briefcase and trench coat he got off at his stop. He must ride the train often, that huge headed man, because I saw him again two weeks later, a Sunday this time, I was going to the art museum w/ my mom and sarah. Mom noticed him immediately because she's like that, and I worried to myself that I would burn in hell for staring at this poor man who probably had a brain tumor or at least a hell of a complex about the huge size of his head. He was like frankenstein or some other creepy monster. When we left sarah at her stop waiting for her train to bristol later that afternoon, the station was so empty and I didn't want to leave her, afraid the train creepos would snatch her away as soon as i turned my back. Some people who ride the train creep you out a lot, but you can't help but wonder where they're going, if they're visiting museums or drug dealers or elderly relatives or just city streets where they can wander though misty night without identity to weigh them down or color to intrude into twilight city grey.

As you can see from the exercise, they're not always entirely coherent or complete, but they do tend to cut through to emotions or phrases that would, under more normal (high-pressure) circumstances, be suppressed by the internal censor. Look, for example, at Roxanne's section about the 'huge-headed man' — perhaps if she were just sitting down to write a poem, her internal censor would switch on and tell her to stick to the story about the boy and not to get weird — but by bringing in that unexpected aspect to the story, the entire piece of writing is much fresher and more full. Writer's block is one of the more daunting aspects of the writing life. Writing exercises, while they might not necessarily turn directly into stunning pieces of writing, do often provide a starting point for the next poem, or, if nothing else, help to get the writer's mind around the negative voices inside that make the lighthouse keep slipping further and further away.

Chapter 6:

Truth in Writing

Using the word 'always' in reference to any guidelines of writing is certainly a very dangerous thing, but I feel safe in the assertion: Good poetry and fiction always strive to get as close to the truth as possible. The question, then, is what is truth? The answer might seem obvious, but when we're talking about creative writing, truth means something altogether different from the obvious "what really happened." As Eudora Welty wisely said, "Making reality real is art's responsibility" (128). The real world is certainly interesting, but it is also full of countless less important details, parts of the situation that don't contribute to the overall feeling of the experience. It is the writer's responsibility to choose how to best accurately represent reality in order to make it the most true to the situation. Take, for example, the British writer Carol Ann Duffy's poem "Recognition." In it, she speaks from the point of view of a woman realizing what has happened to her and her life. Perhaps Duffy herself experience this; perhaps she knows a woman who has. Maybe that woman has one child instead of three, or the grass wasn't wet when she lay in it. The inclusion of these details, however, are what make the poem the most true, in the creative sense of the word.

Recognition

Things get away from one.
I've let myself go, I know.
Children? I've had three
and don't even know them.

I strain to remember a time
when my body felt lighter.
Years. My face is swollen
with regrets. I put powder on,
but it flakes off. I love him,
through habit, but the proof
has evaporated. He gets upset.
I tried to do all the essentials

on one trip. Foolish, yes,
but I was weepy all morning.
Quiche. A blond boy swung me up
in his arms and promised the earth.

You see, this came back to me
as I stood on the scales.
I wept. Shallots. In the window,
creamy ladies held a pose

which left me clogged and old.
The waste. I'd forgotten my purse,
fumbled; the shopgirl gaped at me,
compassionless. Claret. I blushed.

Cheese. Kleenex. It did happen.
I lay in my slip on wet grass
laughing. Years. I had to rush out,
blind in a hot flash, and bumped

into an anxious, dowdy matron
who touched the cold mirror
and stared at me. Stared
and said I'm sorry sorry sorry. (41)

By her usage of significant detail, Carol Ann Duffy has created an utterly truthful poem. Whether this woman exists at in real life is insignificant — she exists now, and vibrantly. The truth of her situation is clear.

A danger in writing, especially for young writers, is the temptation to make a piece of writing "literary," to load it up with symbolism, cleverness, and technique. These experiments can be valuable in teaching writers what does and does not work in a poem, but they can also become harmful to one's style. In focusing on these aspects, writers tend to lose sight of what is important in the poem — the truth of it. In our workshop, Erin's first draft of the poem "Carolina Skies" included a handful of italicized phrases presumably meant to add another dimension to the poem and give it larger meaning. Admirable as the intent is, however, the workshop participants generally agreed that all the italicized additions served to do was distract the reader from the true emotion and situation of the poem:

Carolina Skies

Carolina skies and moon the

color of a Georgia peach

The lines were drawn a little

hazy

Between this state and the

next--

--Horizon--(Skies)

Moon rising hollow and sacred

It is torched by wrinkles of blackened

sand and red oceans

And she stares at me with brutal eyes

Watching the buildings burn in the city

before us—-

Flames catching hold of the rising stars

And sending them into disillusioned frenzies.

--Sanctified—-(Sacred/Hallowed)

The fire escape we sit on—-

A solid state of irony.

—-Succum—-(Escape)

I stand there at the exit—-indecisive

Say I want to stay.

I want to sink and never surface.

I want to go to the Pacific ocean near

Cocolhamaus

-—Pause-—(Indecisive)

I want to be fireproof.

--Existence--(Be)

She says.

Hmm-—Maybe I can get you to the

Pacific—-

Then brushes my arm and points

At the cut brilliant stones radiant before

the rising of the Carolina moon,

The sharpness of the stars diminishing the

fire of the universe around us—-

And she throat-whispers—-

—-Piercing—-(Sharpness)

Just watch that one burn baby,

Just watch that one burn.

What Erin had created in the rest of the poem was an observed and interesting human connection painted in very interesting language. The italicized sections were preventing us from connecting to the truth of the poem. In revision, Erin heeded our suggestions and removed the italics, as well as altering a few other parts of the poem. The result was a strong, truly observed poem

Another issue that frequently emerges in writing toward truth is knowing when to omit significant details. There were times during the workshop when all members, myself included, were reluctant to cut certain lines from poems — we would bite our tongues to keep from blurting out, "But that's really how it happened!" In most cases, though, the criticism was right — the objective readers could tell more accurately than the personally-involved writer where the real truth of the poem lay. Louise Gluck says, "The source of art is experience, the end product truth, and the artist surveying the actual, constantly intervenes and manages, lies and deletes, all in the service of truth" (34).

Perhaps the biggest reason for all the difficulty surrounding the issue of truth is that we feel we need permission to change the telling of a story or event. Young writers— I know from experience — have a particularly difficult time changing literally true details in their writing because they feel that then they are not being faithful to an important situation or circumstance. We would all do well to heed the poet Robert Lowell's words about truth in writing:

There's a good deal of tinkering with fact. You leave out a lot, and emphasize this and not that. Your actual experience is a complete flux. I've invented facts and changed things and the whole balance of the poem was something invented. So there's a lot of artistry, I hope, in the poems. Yet there's this thing: if a poem is autobiographical — and this true of any kind of autobiographical writing and historical writing — you want the reader to say, this is true. (114)

Writing is about being as truthful as possible, not necessarily to the exact situation itself, but to the emotions and feelings inherent in that situation. To paraphrase Eudora Welty, it is our job as writers to help create and reflect the reality in which we are immersed constantly. Art — and writing as a form of art — is what makes reality more than just something we walk through. In truthful writing, regardless of if that truth is literal or figurative, reality transcends itself and becomes meaningful and true.

Chapter 7:

A Question of Clarity

The issue of clarity may seem redundant following the discussion of truth. After all, if a writer is being truthful, doesn't it follow that she will also be clear with what she is saying? Well, not necessarily. Truth deals largely with meaning — clarity deals mainly with the more banal but still vital problem of basic understanding. No matter how truthfully felt and imagined a poem or story may be, if the author does not use the exact right words and phrases to transmit those emotions, the piece of writing is going to be lost on its audience. To make reference to the Ezra Pound quotation Raymond Carver had hanging on his wall, "Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing" (Bailey 74). The question then becomes, how can a writer best achieve this fundamental accuracy?

Numerous writers and artists have made a case for simplicity of language and subject. Chekhov said, "One must write about simple things: how Peter Semionovich married Maria Ivanova. That is all" (Oates 2). Louise Gluck explains that, "[F]rom the beginning I preferred the simplest vocabulary. What fascinated me were the possibilities of context" (4). And Vincent van Gogh, an artist with perhaps the most unique and clear vision of his day, wrote in a letter to his brother Theo, "It is so beautiful here if one has only an open and simple eye with few beams in it. But if one has that it is beautiful everywhere" (88). The writer must exercise great caution not to distract the reader with clever language or technique, as discussed in the last chapter, and he must also be certain not to get bogged down in too much 'poetic language' — often, a few well-placed words carry far more impact than a long stream of them.

Look, for example, at this first draft of a poem by Sarah. Note the places where the truth of the poem gets lost in too much language and distracting, ineffective detail, like the lines at the end of the second and third stanzas:

What a woman at a party is thinking:

shit. i know you're wasted off your ass.
that red light looks like christmas
deformed,
people are grinding on people like black
dominoes
slowly falling through smoke

i'm slightly tipsy like a weeble-wobble—-
my pupils are small in the mirror I said
hello to myself & saw an ex-lover's magnetic eyes
watching me—-I used to get lost in them like
a thousand colored balloons disappearing
into a violet thunderstorm sky.

are poets useless.
why do I always end up dancing alone
in the corner like a moth
blindly beating brick walls to gain
back her self-confidence
love is like white plastic—
it can be melted.

don't touch me, bastard.
your silver mouth can't do anything compared
yo the paintings that lie in my half-
mooned fingernails

and tomorrow I'll be laughing with the
orange streamers—-
we will both wave calmly in the morning breeze
as beer stains grow rapidly like feasting termites
on ragged blue carpet.

i laugh at.
i laugh at.

Now take a look at her revised version, after the workshop talked about the issue of clarity in her poem. Sarah removed the lines that served only to take the reader into the realm of 'poetry' and trusted the stronger, more specific lines to stand on their own. The choices she made were subtle but good ones. The revised draft of the poem presents a familiar scene in unexpected ways through language, imagery, and tone. By making the poem more clear, Sarah allowed it to become more accessible and more powerful.

What a woman at a party is thinking:

shit.
i know you're wasted off your ass.
that red light looks like christmas
deformed,
people are grinding on people like black
dominoes
slowly falling through smoke
i'm slightly tipsy like a weeble-wobble—-
my pupils are small in the mirror,
i say hello to myself & watch my face
grow distant like a balloon disappearing

are poets useless.
why do I always end up dancing alone
in the corner—-a moth
blindly beating brick walls

love is the white bathtub
Ssmewhere in the corner shrinking
as I pee, again.

don't touch me bastard.
your silver mouth can't do anything
and tomorrow the orange streamers and I
will be laughing—-
waving in the morning breeze
beer stains spread like feasting termites
on ragged carpet.

i laugh at.
i laugh at.

Clarity in writing can also come from a different angle, however. In some cases, it is not that too many details are distractingly provided, but rather that the poem itself is ambiguous in its situation or meaning. In certain poems, ambiguity may be positive, intentional device that supports what the writer is attempting to achieve. In other poems, however, lack of clarity may simply be the result of a writer who is too familiar with her/his situation and does not know how to make it accessible for other readers. In Cori's poem "Before Sushi," she recounts a situation in which she meets a boy who brags about his battle scars:

Before Sushi

He was a third degree black-belt.

That's what I was told before I met him

Yet his body was so thin

Clothes swallowed him up.

His feet were heavy when he walked

So that I thought his legs would shatter

At impact on the ground.

He was just out of the hospital.

A bandage on his forehead

Right to his hairline.

An accident while cliff diving.

Spiked red hair and pale eyes curious at me.

Someone new.

Do you want to see it?

My eyes went from his eyes to his stomach

His lips had barely moved

Shoulders shuffling on the seams.

He fingered the edge of his cotton shirt

nervously.

Sure

With a glide

The exposed black seemed to dance on

his stomach.

A black dragon clawing at his abdominals.

Wow

And it was gone

His hands were calloused

He scratched where the dragon was.

His neck turned red, and I noticed a scar

on his chin.

Come on, nothin's that painful.

This original draft left many of us with questions — we weren't sure sometimes who was saying what dialogue, especially the final line, or what exactly was going on in some of the images. Cori listened to our comments and revised with them in mind. The end result is a much clearer, more accessible poem that doesn't lose its readers in confusing dialogue and descriptions.

Is it always absolutely vital, however, that the readers completely understand precisely what is being said? John Gardner offers a counterargument to Gluck by discussing how he has been known to make up words solely for the sake of rhythm, not necessarily clarity of meaning. He argues, "You don't have to understand words. Language is texture" (958). Many writers would doubtless disagree with a least the first part of Gardner's statement — how is it okay for a reader to not understand the words the writer is using to convey his meaning? I believe, however, that despite their differences in viewpoints, Gardner and Gluck are coming to the idea of writing from the same direction. They are both looking for the most basic truth in their works, and both are trying to get to it in the way that they know best, Gluck through simple language and Gardner through 'texture.' For Gardner, texture in language is his own form of clarity, the technique he uses in order to present the most accurate rendering of his own version of truth.

There are no hard and fast rules in writing, just guidelines to follow. Guidelines are made to be broken, so long as, in breaking them, the writer does not sacrifice the truth of her poem to unnecessary or careless ambiguity, affected technique, or falseness.

Chapter 8:

Risk, Style, and Experimentation

Every writer, whether she is aware of it or not, has her own distinct style. This style is not, however, inherent or unchanging, but rather something that shifts and changes, sometimes drastically, over time. Style is influenced by a number of different factors, including maturity, reading other writers, studying writing, and the aspect I'm going to focus on most strongly here, experimentation.

Experimentation in writing is, I believe, vital to encouraging growth in one's own style; without experimenting, young writers have no way of knowing what exactly they are capable of achieving. Very often they may fall completely flat on their faces, but there will also be the occasional triumph that makes all the stumbling worthwhile. Most successful poems and stories have taken some sort of risk — they have to, for there to be anything truly at stake. Sometimes this risk is much more pronounced than others, but according to Robert Penn Warren:

In a way, of course, all writing that is any good is experimental; that is, it's a way of seeing what is possible — what poem, what novel is possible. Experiment — they define it as putting a question to nature and that is true of writing undertaken with seriousness. You put the question to human nature — and especially your own nature — and see what comes out. It is unpredictable. If it is predictable — not experimental in that sense — then it will be worthless. (15)

But, to paraphrase an earlier quotation by Frank Conroy, people are afraid to fail, afraid to produce a piece of work that isn't good, that is, in fact, bad. Writing is, in itself, already a risky undertaking. In order to do it effectively, a writer has to open himself up to all sorts of messy emotions and raw issues, and then find a way to produce a piece of writing that truthfully speaks of the feeling or circumstance. Experimenting with this raw material can be quite frightening, especially because the threat of failure is so immediate. Erin's experiment with the italicized sections of her poem, included to enhance another layer of what was already going on, didn't work. All it succeeded in doing was distracting us from the really good part of the poem. Or was that all it succeeded in doing?

By experimenting and not succeeding, Erin learned a lot about what to avoid when writing poetry. She also learned to trust her own voice a bit more — what she really wanted to say was interesting enough on its own. Had she not put herself out on a limb, however, Erin would not have discovered what she did. Faulkner would have been proud of Erin. In an interview, he said, "young writers almost never ask themselves, 'What is the kind of story I would most like to write about?' They're ashamed to, maybe. In writing, as in anything in the world, if you think it's worth doing, you just have to do it wonderfully, with total self-abnegation" (197). Essentially, write what you know, but in this context, 'know' translates to include 'feel' under its umbrella.

Experimenting with style is really the only way for a young writer to find and develop his voice, and experimentation can only truly be successful if the writer has permission — from herself, from a book, from William Faulkner — to completely and utterly fail. If failure from experimentation can be regarded by the writer not as a failure, but rather as, cliched as it sounds, a lesson, then the writer is well on her way to achieving freedom as a writer, freedom from the criticism from others and, most importantly, from herself.

Afterword

Clarity, truth, voice, experimentation, trusting in failure...The past thirty or so pages have covered some pretty intense territory, and there is no easy way to sum it up. But why try? That is exactly the point of all I've discussed, all that we learned in the workshop, and all that we do as writers. There is no easy way — maybe no possible way — to sum up. Writing is a broad, vast venture. There are no rules, as I said earlier, but only guidelines that exist to be broken.

What I can do here, though, is give voice to some of the members of the workshop, and show a bit of what these young writers actually got from the experience. I asked them the question "What was the most important thing you got from the workshop?" Here are their responses:

Cori: I feel like I became more intimately acquainted with some of the other poets' work on campus, so that now we can identify, and offer even more precise criticism for each other.

Roxanne: The workshop gave me incentive to write more often, and a group of peers that was extremely supportive and helpful. The workshop provided a comfortable environment to share our work and get good feedback; it was especially helpful because I didn't have any workshop classes last semester, so I was able to keep writing.

Adam: I believe the writing exercises helped me the most, although the workshopping itself was extremely helpful as well...the writing exercises helped me to find ways to keep myself writing even when I find that I can't, because, taking the model for the exercises — the different topics we would write about, the different way we would start the writings — I can adapt them to myself and use them when I am in the most blocked state of writing.

Sarah: I got lots and lots of help with the revision, which I really, really needed and appreciated. Since I was trying to form a portfolio for graduate school, this help from someone other than my advisor was wonderful — without this group, my poems wouldn't have improved nearly as much as they did. I don't think I even realized while in the midst of it how helpful it was, but looking back now, I realize my portfolio was a lot sharper because of this small group of people who cared about my poems and wanted to help make them the best they could be, without ruining my intentions and without losing my voice.

Erin: Confidence. This was the first time I had let my poetry up to be ravaged. Poetry is my closest piece of writing. I was very tentative about the idea of letting it be workshopped.

The three main points that come up repeatedly in their assessments are confidence, incentive, and community. It is the last of these that I feel is the most important for a writer to have.

Is it possible for a writer to write out of literary isolation? Possibly. But it is a community of writers that can give someone the courage, criticism, and encouragement she needs to really push herself all the way in her writing. Especially for young writers, like those of us in the workshop, writing can be a very daunting task. The risk of failure is constant, and because writing is such a subjective art, confidence in one's work can be difficult to build. A workshop community, provided it is a positive, serious one, can give the writer what she needs to move beyond her internal censor and break through to fresh, exciting work

There are no rules. Maybe that makes the whole endeavor even more frightening, but it is also a source of writing's great freedom. Take advantage of it. Share it with others. Work alone, work with a community. Accept your own failure, but remember to also be always on the lookout for your own success — it may show up when you least expect it, strong, risky, and bright.