What a Thing to Inspire a Workshop

For all of his worry about bad poetry and all of his concern about the current state of poetry, Hollander at least ends the second section of The Work of Poetry on a positive note. Because of all of the schools of verse there are that many more people writing verse, and there are also that many more critics of poetry, but nonetheless, true poets will emerge as they always do.

For a chapter that's titled "Oh Heavy Verse! The Shopwork of the Workshops," he really doesn't give much depth to his discussion of writing workshops. Outside of saying that poetry is something people come to on their own, and that workshops are generating people with tin ears and poor poetic senses, he makes no true points.

Nonetheless, as narrow as this narrow-sounding chapter might be, it has me feeling very self-conscious of my own poetry (or should I call it verse?). I write in a kind of half formal, half free verse mode most of the time, and frequently use half rhymes or assonance rather than full rhymes. But if variety and tone are central to poetry, I at least have those - at least.