[MacArthur]

How would this piece by Simic have fared – if it had been composed by an unknown and aspiring writer – in some kind of critique context: in an on-line critique forum, in a casual "writing group", in a paid Writer's Workshop, or an MFA critique workshop?

Mostly not very well. Although the strategy pursued here would, if validated by an editor, probably be readily accepted by the same peer-review group, it would likely meet some routine obstacles when offered as an unpublished draft.

First of all, the "realistic" bits:

Sometimes walking late at night
I stop before a closed butcher shop.
There is a single light in the store…

An apron hangs on the hook:
The blood on it smeared…

There are knives that glitter…

There is a wooden block where bones are broken,
Scraped clean…

Here probably jejune writing school cliches would combine with a naïve view that poems achieve artistic concentration by admitting as few words as possible to provoke all sorts of attempts to "pare down" the writing.

You could imagine…

At night
I stop before a butcher shop.
There is a light…


An apron hangs on a hook:
Blood smeared…

Knives glitter…

Bones are broken on a wooden block
Scraped clean…

Or worse. This trivial economy of expression would stylistically destroy the deceptive and leisurely pace Simic employs to introduce his key details, while gaining essentially nothing in terms of a spurious (and in any case out-of-place) "intensity".

Next the imagery bits:

…Like the light in which the convict digs his tunnel.

…into a map
Of the great continents of blood,
The great rivers and oceans of blood.

…like altars
In a dark church
Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile
To be healed.

…a river dried to its bed

Apart from the mangling due to "word-trimming", another writing -class cliché is sure to pop up at this point": the War on "Like" and "As".

Because poets have sometimes been able to achieve effects by suppressing the explicit expression of comparison in their syntax this device has been elevated to a routine and indiscriminate desideratum.

Of the four comparisons made in this piece the first and the third are expressly introduced with "like", while the second and the fourth are not. Some knowing fellow is bound to suggest:

There is a single light in the store –
The light in which the convict digs his tunnel

or even:

There is a single light
In which the convict digs his tunnel

and

There are knives that glitter –
Altars in a dark church (etc.)

Alas, something is worth noting here.

Suppressing "like" is most effective for adding some small punch to otherwise stale comparisons. Comparing blood-smears to a map, or a chopping block to a dried river bed, just isn't very fresh…mostly because rivers (and oceans) of blood, and dry river-beds have themselves nearly expired into automatic figures of speech in our culture.

On the other hand, comparing the lonely light in the store with a convict's light in an escape tunnel, or comparing an array of glittering knives with an altar in a darkened church (with the added resonance from the details of supplicants to be healed) is startling and original: in fact, it threatens to overwhelm the poem and interrupt the flow.

Simic wisely chose to "tame" these images with the explicit expression of a comparison, alerting us to the relative importance of these details – "Don't be detained – these are only comparisons."
This is mostly too subtle for the Workshop grind.

Finally, those mysterious last two lines.

Wanna-be poets who have little potential seldom attempt such passages spontaneously, whereas potential poets with genuine raw talent are prone to (with varying degrees of success) right from the start. The no-talents nearly always get to club those with potential in the workshop environment.

Many in a workshop would want to simply edit out those last two lines, leaving a sort of medium-register imagistic mood-piece about a butcher-shop.

Others would want to translate the mystique of the last two lines, variously into more realistic description, further imagery, or a rhetorical summing up of the "point" of the piece - as discussed in part one. No-talents would be uncomfortable with the mystery of these lines…because here is precisely where the pool gets deep, and their toes no longer touch bottom.

[oliver murray]

Mac,

Could I just say I found your exegesis of this piece very interesting indeed, and I really have nothing to contribute, or argue about here, and perhaps that is why others are not commenting, but I didn't want it to pass unnoticed. I have learned quite a bit from this and it has helped me to think further on a poem on a similar theme I have been trying to make come right for over two years. Here's hoping.

Regarrds,

Oliver

[Richard Wakefield]

Mac:
Long ago I had a copy of "Moby Dick" that included critical articles, among them excerpts from early damning reviews. Most were by critics who are completely forgotten and long out of print except for that one dumb pronouncement about a novel that they failed to recognize as great. When I began writing criticism I remembered that book and those excerpts. I don't know whether I've been a better critic for that reason, but I have tended to try to be aware of my own dogma. Same thing in workshops, except that even more than I try to avoid dogma, I try to avoid workshops.
But in the workaday world, even the workaday world of art, greatness always involves the risk of being misunderstood. Most of readers aren't up for greatness very often; in fact, it takes a kind of greatness to recognize greatness and perhaps to make it accessible to others.
If your work is critiqued by someone struggling to make a few hundred bucks writing for a big daily paper, you can hope for that kind of greatness, but you can't expect it. If you submit your work to a workshop (how I dislike that word!), you can hope that some of the people who are there mostly because they have "a restless urge to write" and can afford the tuition will have that kind of greatness, but you can't expect it.
Thoreau offered the best consolation: The workman gets his wages as he goes.
A poet had better find satisfaction in the labor of creation, because she or he can't plan on getting it from public and critical acclaim.
RPW

[eaf]

Ok, saw this and figured I'd comment. I suppose I can offer a Philistine's view.

I tend to agree that excessive workshopping can deaden a poem. The fear of "like", "as", the general hatred of gerunds and participles...all of them may be good practices but are certainly not to be regarded as the gospel. Many are, however, helpful for young writers. Experienced writers should know what advice to follow, and should have an idea what may or may not work in their own poems when they post them.

Regarding Simic...I've read quite a bit his work and have generally enjoyed his early stuff. Later, though, it seems he's just shamming--throwing images on the page and hoping that his audience will recognize his stature as a Great Poet.

Having said that, I tend to disagree about those last two lines being "the deep end of the pool". To me, they more closely resemble Simic's later work (even though I think this piece is from an early book of his)--he won't put forth the effort to make these statements mean anything. I've read a lot of amateur crap poems in various lit mags that try this same tactic. Ah, but this is Simic! It must mean something. Right?

Why?

Many in a workshop would want to simply edit out those last two lines, leaving a sort of medium-register imagistic mood-piece about a butcher-shop.

I totally agree that the last two lines do add some effect, but they fail, in my opinion, to make this poem into anything more than a medium-register mood piece.

-eaf

[Tim Love]

I think that workshops are usually good at making bad poems better. I think poets may need to be quite skilled/selective if they are to use a workshop to help make their good poems even better.
Workshops are useful for people who haven't had feedback before, and for people who read narrowly, workshops can introduce new possibilities (e.g. that poems don't need to rhyme). But especially with the sort of workshop where a stable group meet monthly I think the disadvantages might outweigh the advantages after a year - poet and critics get locked into roles.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Tim

I agree with you about the workshop process helping to improve poems. I also agree that the Internet poetry workshop has the advantage over a in-the-flesh workshop that has a set number of people and designated meeting times and places. The Internet variety can offer more opinions and poets and critics, as you say, don't tend to get locked into roles as they do in regular workshops.

All the best

Chris