[Nick McRae]

I appreciate the replies, many helpful comments scattered above. Unfortunately, I'm short on time these days so it's difficult to reply to every one individually.

My original intent in coming here was to critique and be critiqued, but I don't seem to have the time or energy to meet the review criteria (read: small children). I'm in a dormant period no matter how you look at it so will have to take some of these comments away and see what I can do with them.

And for the record, I've written primarily non-metrical, but taking a stab at metrical sounds like it could make for a fun exercise.

Thanks again, and feel free to keep the comments coming. I'll be back to re-read these posts, and hopefully add some new replies.

[Julie Steiner]

Welcome, Nick.

The real education at Eratosphere is in the writing of critiques, far more than in the reading of them. Having to articulate what floats your boat (or doesn't) in others' poetry is the best way to develop a critical understanding of your own work.

Having other people articulate what floats THEIR boat can often be helpful, but the temptation is to respond by trying to write the sort of poem that will play well to the sometimes-narrow sensibilities of this particular audience. Try to remain true to your own weirdness, even if it doesn't always go over well here.

Originally Posted by W T Clark

One of the great problems with the expansiveness of poetry in workshops, is being recommended lists of poets who write in "form" (read metrical poetry, all good poetry is in form, metrical or not) such as the one put forward by Susan.

A far bigger damper on risk-taking in workshops might be the withering public ridicule you just unloaded on another member, Cameron. It's fine to disagree with Susan's picks, and even to do so vigorously, but pillorying her like that was just breathtakingly insulting.

I'm almost as gobsmacked that you don't find Stallings' and Majmudar's use of language innovative. (Are we reading the same poems? Do you really have to go all the way back to 1997, when Stallings was in her twenties, to find a poem by her that you like? Huh.) But I know you don't consider Larkin's use of language innovative, either, so your boat is significantly harder to float than mine.

[Yves S L]

Hello Nick,

I don't think comments, however narrow, however much of a projection of the commenter's concept of what poetry should be or is are much of a problem, if one treats them as technical experiments to try out, where the experiment can be discarded if one does not personally like the results.

If someone attempts to force you somehow to conform to their own concepts, then such a person can simply be ignored. Actually, the further a person's concept of poetry is from you own, the more useful a technical experiment might arise, just because you are being invited to go out of the way of the normal trends of your own thoughts.

I agree with Julie in so far as I consider the writing of critique the most useful part of a workshop, since you are forced to clarify exactly what is that you like or dislike. For me, the basic skill in poetry is being able to take and put back together a poem on multiple technical levels, which would also dictate what it is you get out of reading another person's poetry as a route of expanding one's own. Simply put: just how many specific things do you, can you notice about any give poem, taking all structural levels in consideration?

The more options you can perceive about how any given effect in a poem is created, the more directions your experiments can go, and the less likely you are to get stuck in technical ruts.

Obviously, there is more to this, and I did not at all exert the effort to go into super-details, but then the original comment itself was written on a rather vague level, with many underspecified words like "passable poetry" (which I took to indicate a level of self-confidence in one's own productions without specifying why the self-confidence exists ... I started considering my own poetry good when … ).

[Christine P'legion]

Originally Posted by Susan McLean

I find that challenges can push me to try new things.

Susan, I've found the same thing; in fact, this year's NaPoWriMo challenge back in April was a particularly fruitful time for me, and I got a nice handful of workable drafts out of it. And the challenge responses that ultimately didn't go anywhere were still good exercises, on the whole.

(If anyone's interested in that, this year's prompts are still up. Here's the first, and you can just click through for the rest: https://www.napowrimo.net/day-one-4/)

Nick, I quite sympathise about being in the season of small children! I'm in the same boat and how often I can pop into the forums here waxes and wanes, which is pretty normal for people here, I think. None of it's going to disappear while you're gone In my own practice one of the most helpful things has just been to accept that my time and energy have considerable limitations right now. It won't be like this forever, but right now it is, so I try to hold my expectations very lightly.

As for this --

But it feels like I'm at an inflection point because I want to continue mastering the craft, but don't know exactly.. how to do that, beyond continuing to read and write.

I think you know your answer