Knickers in a Twist

GOLLL - EE, I made one fairly innocuous little remark about the size of the group and ignited a firestorm! I am at once laughing, wincing, shaking my head in disbelief at the ferocity of the responses. Tom and Tim are calling me up, Cathy is threatening to quit, every one has a different interpretation of the situation...when all I meant to do was call attention to the fact that we have to regulate ourselves with regard to rambling on, being concise and not wasting time, sticking to the topic at hand - which is, of course, improving the poems which are submitted for consideration. Rest assured, the group is not going to become "invitation only" or be split up. I am including the text of Tom's message about Eamon Grennan's group. We can discuss the pros and cons of trying out this approach when we meet at Alan's on Saturday. In the meantime - let's relax, folks. bv


from Tom:

EOTNPs!!!

Relative to the growth spurt our group seems to be undergoing, I’ve been thinking about the way Eamon Grennan structured the critiquing portion of his master class at SUNYA that Mimi & I participated in a few years ago.

It went FAST. It went around the table ONCE. If you had something to say about a poem, you said it. If you had nothing to say, you passed. No quibbling. No arguing. Each person was given a max of maybe 10 to 15 seconds. (We could bump it up to 30 or 45 seconds each, begin the critiquing with the person to the left of the poet, i.e., the reader, & proceed clockwise.)

We could try this on for size.