This & Last Week's Post

Sorry I've been so behind....No excuses really, but if three midterms in one day and two papers the following day, and an ear infection can constitute for me totally forgetting about blogging, then that's my excuse. Anyway, last week I really enjoyed having Cathy Park come into our class-she was awesome. Totally not what I was expecting, and I don't really know what I was expecting, but she wasn't it...not in a bad way at all. She was really cool and I felt like the conversation came really easy. I was glad she was able to read some of her work for a couple reasons. I wasn't going to be able to make it to her poetry reading even though I REALLY wanted to, so I was happy when she agreed to read to our class. Secondly, it was really really cool to hear the actual voice behind the poems. Jess did a really good job reading out of her book the previous class, but I really enjoyed hearing Cathy read it. It helped me read her poems a little easier. I also enjoyed hearing how she got started and how she had only started getting serious when she was our ages, maybe a little older. That makes me feel better when I think to myself as I write poems that I am no good at it, and I would never be able to write a poem good enough to be published. Now I think if I really wanted to get serious about poetry, I could.

As for this past assignment, I had a lot of trouble with writing a long poem knowing that the entire class would be work shopping it. I had just started getting comfortable with my own workshop group, so knowing that the whole class would be giving me feedback was a little nerve racking and I think it hindered my ability to write because I couldn't help being self conscious.  But after today's class I think towards the end we started getting more comfortable and were able to give people working feedback for future poems they write or if they choose to revise the one that was read by the class.