Workshop Form: POETRY

Critiquer's name ______

Writer's name ______

Poem title ______

Critiquer: please respond fully to the questions below. If you answer with a simple yes or no, you must elaborate and explain.

You may simply open this document in Word, type in your responses, then re-save with your name and the poet’s name in the document title.

Use a font style or color distinct from the questions. (Makes it much easier to read!)

  1. Write a brief initial response to the poem: what do you especially like? What's working particularly well? What seems especially moving, smart, imaginative, skillful, etc? What, if anything, just flat knocks your socks off!?
  2. Any place where you simply get lost, can't follow the poem’s statements, images, reasoning, intuitive leaps, structure? Any place where you just don’t know what’s going on? Go through the draft and mark those specific places with a comment.
  3. Explicate the poem. That is, do a brief paraphrase, line-by-line, of what the poem is saying. Try not to interpret; just objectively paraphrase. Include, in your explication, answers to these questions:
  4. Who is speaking, and how do you know?
  5. Where is the speaker, and how do you know?
  6. Do you have any sense of what species (genre or mode) of poem you are reading?
    Possibilities include:
  7. Narrative (discursive; linear; tells a story)?
  8. Lyric (inward-directed, quiet, non-linear, intuitive)?
  9. Meditative (reflective; thinky; speaker is inside own head)?
  10. Elegy (mournful; main subject is loss)?
  11. Spoken-word (musically gymnastic, public-oriented, or otherwise suitable for speaking out loud)?
  12. Surreal (strange images and juxtapositions, archetypes springing from unconscious)?
  13. Confessional (spills the beans? Relates somewhat risky or even risqué, normally private information? Very sharply personal?) Etc.
  14. Language
  15. How would you describe the voice in the poem? Casual? Formal? Cynical? Wistful? Blank? Quiet? Loud? etc. Provide examples.
  16. Where is the language (diction ((word choice)), sentence style, syntax) really surprising, odd, imaginative, and fresh? Mention or quote those passages:
  17. Where is the language stale, flat, clichéd, formulaic, awkward? Again, mention or quote those passages:
  18. How musical is the poem?
  19. If it is using end rhyme, are the rhymes predictable, strained, or inappropriately sing-songy?
  20. Where, if at all, do you hear internal rhyme?
  21. Where do you hear music in the lines apart from strict rhyme?
  22. How much good, specific, concrete detail do you see in the poem?
    A very common problem among beginning poets is language that is general, abstract, and vague. The poets speaks vaguely about some general matter without actually proving, showing, or enacting what they mean in real, concrete terms. It’s much better to use language that is particular, sensory, and lucid.
    Comment:
  23. Beginning writer bloopers (comment as needed):
  24. Pat, predictable, pre-digested theme.
  25. Sentimental, trite, or predictable language and metaphors.
  26. Trick or twist endings.
  27. Circular poems which start with a line, word, or idea and come back to it at the end. (Predictable; done way too often. It’s more surprising and moving, actually, to suggest circularity, but then upset that expectation.)
  28. Any final questions, suggestions, comments?

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