It took me closer to 2 hours to pick my poem to distribute today. I had a plethora of poems to choose from. I had poems that had long and short lines, and even one that took up a whole page, including all of the margins. I wasn’t particularly proud of any one of them, except one that I wrote based on the prompt we received to take a line from 10 poems and squish them together. (This infuriated me, because I considered that poem to be one that I hadn’t actually written since I had only strung some lines together).
I know that this was my last workshop and I don’t get to pick another one to be workshopped, but I’m wondering how you guys get over this colossal waste of time. I’d really like to not endure that again. Do you go with a poem that you’re most proud of or one that you’d really like to have edited? Do you guys tend to lean toward shorter or longer lines? Is it a stylistic choice?
I bet it’s probably a personal choice, right? I know I’m going to have to make this decision for the rest of my creative career, but man, it’s a terrible question to ask when you have a collection of poems that mean about the same to you. Help!
Honestly, I just go for the poems that I think will make an interesting workshop—does something unique, has enough meat to get a conversation going, is enjoyable to read. If I’m gonna be subjecting a class to my drivel, they at least deserve to get something out of it.