Poetic Manifesto

My friend Jared and I wrote a poetry manifesto for our writing group's first chapbook of poetry. this manifesto later changed swaying to the groups vote, however i still like this one more than the final version. So for posterity sake and because i believe in this manifesto more - here it is rough edges and all (sans the poetry).

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"Response poems, as I'm defining them, are not just correspondence or letter poems, but poems where another poet uses, transforms and utterly responds or answers one poem with another." – David Shapiro

This group had an idea on criticism, of criticism, specifically criticism as it exists in writing workshops. Basically, it's balderdash, rubbish, a hogwash and a claptrap—it's bullshit. The mentality there being to "fix" a couple lines here, change this word or that comma, be who you are not and 'wa-la' you have written a successful poem. Who defines this success? Certainly not the poet. In this setting art and all of its aesthetic principles are ruled by majority. Mob rule. All this falls under the guise of making the poem better. In all fairness, there are a lot of well-intentioned professors out there slaving over your work, sweating through their tweed night after night, so that someday you may publish in a literary magazine. Hence, the creation of a "workshop poem" and the "magazine poem." This type of criticism doesn't benefit the poet because while it moves things, it does not create or correct essential elements of poetry that often lack in student work. Workshop criticism fixes only the poem and not the overall work of the poet.

This is why the group exists- to unlearn how we were taught to criticize a poem, how to judge a poem, how to spot a "successful" poem and how to ridicule a "failed" poem. In this unlearning process, the hope was to create a new piece of work from the original. Not necessarily to know whether a poem is good or bad, but criticism in terms of how someone felt, what did the poem make them think of.

Our process is simple: to use response poems as a form of criticism.

What is criticism if not a response – a poem responded to then would give the writer the immediate reaction, the immediate feeling or emotion felt by the reader. This would cause a writer to connect with others, share an experience, grow, and the response would be a reflection on the poem, while at the same time changing it literally. If the poem is a success or not is irrelevant – what is relevant is whether or not the writer feels as though what they have strived to accomplish has been achieved- be it intention, form, feeling, wording, etc. It could be a "bad" poem but if the writer feels as though it works then, it works. Period. If we look at experimental poetry we see that the poet has an intention for themselves which they strive to do with meaning being connected to that, but as a by-product. The writer is less concerned with meaning for the audience and more with meaning for him/herself.

In one sense we are trying to scandalize academia but in another sense we feel that this could be a better way to go about teaching creative writing. Most of the group came up through a peer tutoring based writing center. This is essential to our inner workings. We are here to help the writer's intention surface, and how do we do that better than a writing workshop? Simply stated, the workshop fixes specifics- fixes the poems so that other students or the professor "like" it better. In the end workshops are selfish in that they use the audience (who have their own meaning) to correct the poem and align it to their purposes, as opposed to what the poet originally intended. We turn away from that and comment on the whole intention, what we felt and what it made us think. There is only one way to have an original reaction to a poem and that is to follow your gut and your heart. Its how we act on those original gut instincts and emotions that is different. We give the writer a way to know if their intention is being felt by the reader by giving the writer a poem back about how we feel as an audience which helps them to discover their intention, and if their intention was a "success" and can be seen by others. We focus on what the writer intended, not aligning it to our own meaning but to that of the writer. In terms of meaning: we "feel" rather than "fix" and let the writer grow without point and click changes, in turn, meaning becomes less important than writerly intentions. The point is not to write the most meaningful piece but rather to grow as writers and that's why poems don't have to be "good" or "bad".

In our process, the writer would read their poem once out loud and the audience/group would use their immediate reaction to write a timed response (usually 5 min). This is then added to the original poem. Hence, the audience/group then finishes the original poem and creates a new work of art. In a sense, it destroys the original poem by adding exterior verses. Yet, these are not collaborations, nor are they echo poems, nor emulation/ emendation. They are akin to an ekphrasis project (using one art medium to interpret another -writing from a painting, drawing, photograph, etc) but not dealing specifically with the visual. The poems no longer belong to the original poet but to all the poets in the group. This is no mob mentality; rather, it is the mob's poem, everyone is the poet. The process was not only tedious in terms of compiling but was most difficult in the giving of ownership of the poems to the group. We had to let go of our ego's and attachment to our work- a strange move in this day of "me first and the gimmie gimmies."

Equally important, there were no revisions or do-overs to the original poem or the 'responses'. Everything is written as it was the first time, both literally and existentially. We wanted it natural, unrevised and humanized. In this way we come together as a group in that moment. The thread that binds us is the work itself. We differ from the classic writing workshop in that we do not try to simply fix the poem but rather to help the poet become a stronger overall writer and thinker by offering artistic responses instead of straight criticism. Because of this, the group quickly developed a strong bond. Everyone has ownership/ authorship of these poems, and this is why they are left unknown.