Brian McGettrick (aka bmcg on this blog) sent me a link to an article by Sam Sacks. this article, ostensibly a review of an anthology (Best New American Voices 2006) is really a look at workshops and what they are doing to American literature.
i've never liked the idea of workshops. like Mr. Sacks says, they only dilute the talent pool. they bring down those who are talented (and therefore don't need a workshop) and bring those who are untalented up just enough to not discourage them from writing. he even touches on the publishing trade, and how little it means to be published.
granted, the article is about fiction (short stories, mainly), but i think the sentiment can be applied just as well to poetry. there ARE poetry workshops, and the same drivel Mr. Sacks mentions is being released from these places.
the key sentence in the whole article is: "As for grammar and mechanics, the only aspects of writing actually governed by rules, they are considered beneath the contempt of creative minds and are omitted from study." i find grammar and mechanics woefully lacking in most contemporary literature, and it's even worse in poetry. for some reason people just can't seem to be bothered with learning the proper way to say things. and don't even get me started on spelling.
i also think the fact that poems are shorter, and words in a poem are at even more of a premium, any grammatical or mechanical error is magnified.
these things matter, folks. punctuation matters. spelling matters. grammar matters. it's all part of communicating effectively. it's hard enough getting people to read poems, there's no sense in putting them off even more with hard-to-read, grammatically incorrect, mechanically cumbersome pieces.
that's my $0.02.
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