Dougsie,
Thanks for your detailed critique of my poem. As I'm sure you'll agree, the phrase "a poem with zero promise" can be taken more than one way. I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
epigone
A semi-serious side note. I recently workshopped a law review piece just before I was gonig to send it off. One of my colleagues, who tends to get up a head of steam in these settings, told me that she thought my 60-page article could best be improved if I deleted pages 1-34. I told her I didn't find that criticism constructive. It stopped her in her tracks, and it turned out that what she really wanted was for me to get to my thesis more quickly. Moving a paragraph from page 5 to page 2 did the trick. The piece was thereby markedly improved, and the friendship emerged stronger than ever.
|