SAMPLE POETRY WORKSHOP COMMENTS

Please, go into detail, line by line, when commenting on your fellow student's poetry. You are asked to go line by line, picking out even things such as punctuation to correct. Make yourself find at least some words that could be changed. Suggest cuts and changes. Look for words that are not consistent in tone, or worse, are cliches that don't rise to the level of interesting or vivid language.

Avoid writing a comment in a paragraph that says, worst of all, "this was nice!" Your job is to learn how to revise. This is not an exercise in being "nice." It is a lesson that asks you to give serious thought to how poems are written. You should spend a lot of time doing the workshop comments. Make yourself learn the process.

I'm only giving half credit, if that, to short comments that show little thought...

 

By the way, turn off the autoformat in Microsoft Word so that the first lines of your poems do not start with a capital letter. That is an old-fashioned convention that we don't use in poetry these days. I asked you not to use capitalized first lines except as grammatically necessary.

Generally, in poetry, you follow grammatical rules unless you consciously feel the message requires you to break them. Thus, even punctuation is a place to correct and comment when workshoping poems.

This is a three credit college course. I don't really ask that much of you. Put real time into the work--including the revisions/workshops which are a major part of the course.

HERE ARE SOME SAMPLES OF HOW I COMMENTED ON STUDENT POEMS:

 

That's a wonderful draft. No apologies at all needed! I'll tweek it a bit below in italics,  and I'd like to count it as either "one of your own" or "imagistic." It certainly creates a super image of the child. If this is a sample of how well and how hard you work, you should do very well.  May I count it? Up to you... Cheers, Dr. A.

You don't need to capitalize the first word in every line...

 

Angel   Shorten the title so you don't repeat (no need for a refrain) and it avoids being too "cute"

 

Sitting there in her comfy

purple Bratz chair cozy in her

lime pajamas. Amber

hair over her almond eyes. I'm cutting some--words either not needed or cut to avoid too many adjectives...

In her own world of Hyrule, I'll give you that word but I don't know what it means... A game of some kind?

determined to win, she

slings her sword with Link,

I'd like a line here that explains who or what Link is...  

"Help me, Mommy," she

calls out to me, her sword

slashing, "I've only got one

Heart." I look at her, amazed perhaps if you say you go up to her or describe getting closer...

how much she's grown, but   ...that would prepare me for how you catch her scent.

still smells like a baby.

 

I think the idea of her smelling like a baby makes a great end-line and so I cut the rest. You don't need to editorialize if you have such a super image to end the poem!

 

So, I've applied a pretty heavy editorial hand to this but what is left is tight, highly descriptive, personal and quite lovely!  I hope this process helps you.  Dr. A.

HERE IS ANOTHER SAMPLE OF WORKSHOP COMMENTS:

 

Look

Look at me,
What do you see?
Could you ever see,
What I want there to be?

Look at me,=punc. is period, not comma.
I’m a girl, just a girl, =check punctuation. You are over-punctuating. You don't need the commas at the line ends in many cases.
Who looks at you,
With hopeful eyes,
And cheerful cries.

Look at you,
Who are you?
You’re stuck in this,
This thing you created. You are making more music than sense. By that I mean that you are very into structure and how the words sound. But I don't really know who is doing what to whom? I'm a fan of poems that share details and let me picture a setting and the characters.

Look at us,
Can you see it?
It’d be more beautiful, "It'd" =should be "It would" as you've set a formal tone.
Than you could ever imagine.=period for punc.

You look at all this,
And it appears that you,
You just bypass it.
Bypass me.
Could we ever be?
Let’s just leave it to
DESTINY. You don't need all CAPS. End punc.=period

 

So let's look at this for what you did well. You clearly enjoy setting up a form and sticking with it. You have a talent there. The poem uses language economically. That is, you are concise, not wordy. That said, when I get to the end, I feel a bit left out. As I say, poetry is a matter of taste and I like to feel I know who the people are in a poem. Then I can decide if the subject also relates to me. You are writing more an idea

HERE'S ANOTHER SAMPLE OF POETRY WORKSHOP COMMENTS: