small ramble on poetry in an academic setting

Being in multiple classes where I am reading and analyzing poetry, as well as in a poetry writing workshop, I’ve started to really think about the view on poetry in academic spaces. 

I have only workshopped one of my pieces this semester, with one poem workshopped last semester in a creative writing workshop, and one thing I’ve noticed is there feels like there is a sort of assumption that you don’t know what you’re doing, with both free form and structured poems. In workshops for both those poems my professor and peers felt like they were running on the assumption I didn’t quite know what I was doing. One person even went as far as to assume a very obvious visual format was something I stumbled into on complete accident. 

There seems to be an overall distaste for poetry that is meant to be confusing or not clear. The first poem I submitted was admittedly confusing to follow, but it was written with that intention. It was not meant to be an easy read, especially as it referanced mythology (that I admittedly thought was a little more popular, but I digress). The second poem I submitted was more clear in theme but not in context, and that was also on purpose. It feels like there is no value in poetry that doesn’t spoon feed every miniscule detail to you, even less in poetry that intentionally is missing details. Unfortunate for me; I love reading and writing confusing poetry. 

I may post poem 1 soon. I will definitely post poem 2 once I am finished workshopping it, thought that may not be until the end of the semester since I don’t want to risk getting marked as plagiarizing my own work haha.