[R. Nemo Hill]

Poems get discussed, regardless of what changes are made to them, and discussion is always valuable to a working poet. The idea that critique is some sort of cut-and-dried, one-size-fits-all, how-to surgery, or that a workshop is a place for the collaborative authorship of a poem, seems naive in the former instance, and the death of the muse in the latter.

I often spend a great deal of time and energy elaborating on crits I receive without changing the poem. I don't see how that is any less valuable to and appropriate for a workshop environment than critiquers who simple say I think you should change that, I don't like it, and are unable to articulate why. Accepting critique means acknowledging it in depth, not embracing it automatically. The depth of discussion and examination of poetics here is what makes this a non-beginners workshop. Opinion in and of itself is not critique.

Nemo