The Futility of the Poetry Workshop

A recent attempt to "workshop" my attempts at poetry with another poet revealed the process to be an awkward and self-negating one. I think we both approached the session with the intent of offering advice, encouragement, and constructive criticism, but left feeling a bit helpless in the endeavor.

The problem with workshopping poetry is that you can only go so far in critiquing mechanics and structure when they are so often perverted by the poet deliberately. When you assume (as you should) that every mistake or idiosyncrasy is a tool or a stylistic device, you can only really critique how well the poet uses such tools to get his point across. But knowing his point is an unrealistic exercise in meta-poetry; it asks how well the poet poetically delivers his poetry. "Real poems" come without their authors to explain them away, so we're really just left with our gut reactions: I like it, or I don't.