We've looked at 'Georgia fired first' for a long time so this seemed a good place to go.

Couldn't resist the coincidence of someone sending me the poem below on the day when so many WOL members are beavering away at their workshops in Hebden Bridge (which is what makes it topical). I'm sure the workshops are brilliant and nothing like this one.

In the Workshop After I read My Poem Aloud


All at once everyone in the room says
nothing. They continue doing this and I begin to know
it is not because they are dumb. Finally


the guy from the Bay Area who wears his chapbook
on his sleeve says he likes the poem a lot
but can't really say why and silence


starts all over until someone says she only has
a couple of teeny suggestions such as taking out
the first three stanzas along with


all modifiers except 'slippery' and 'delicious'
in the remaining four lines. A guy who
hasn't said a word in three days says


he too likes the poem but wonders why
it was written and since I don't know either
and don't even know if I should


I'm grateful there's a rule
I can't say anything now. Somebody
I think it's the shrink from Seattle


says the emotion is not earned and I wonder
when is it ever. The woman on my left
who just had a prose poem in Green Thumbs and Geoducks


says the opening stanza is unbelievable
and vindication comes for a sweet moment
until I realize she means unbelievable.


But I have my defenders too and the MFA from Iowa
the one who thinks the you is an I
and the they a we and the then a now


wants to praise the way the essential nihilism
of the poem's occasion serves to undermine
the formality of its diction. Just like your comment


I say to myself. Another admires the zenlike polarity
of the final image despite the mildly bathetic
symbolism of sheep droppings and he loves how


the three cliches in the penultimate stanza
are rescued by the brazen self-exploiting risk.
The teacher asks what about the last line


and the guy with the chapbook volunteers it suits
the poem's unambitious purpose though he has to admit
it could have been worded somewhat differently


Don Colburn ('In the Palm of Your Hand')

I find I don't ever write anything that's any good in a workshop, but I do write something I'm quite pleased with shortly after. And I enjoy workshops because it is so nice to be creative in the company of others. So they are very productive, but not at the time (for me)!