Comments on:

By: Steven D. Schroeder

Steven D. Schroeder — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 05:55:00 +0000

"I-was-walking-through-the-woods-and-had-this-epiphany"

I like to think I coined this phrase ;-)

By: jeannine

jeannine — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 20:45:00 +0000

Aimee – six BABY peacocks, and a white peacock – all in a lavender field about 45 minutes from the coast. That is also where I saw the covey of quail. Cute!

Thanks Jilly – and Alissa – and Lana (no, not crazy – just creative 🙂

By: cornshake

cornshake — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:39:00 +0000

um, i have to pipe in here. no one is talking about the amazing fact that you saw peacocks?! on the beach??!! so jealous!!!

By: Lana Hechtman Ayers

Lana Hechtman Ayers — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 17:47:00 +0000

Eloquent as always, Jeannine. Your students are going to be lucky to have a teacher like you.

Every day I wake up, I’m a new persona. I can’t believe what that other Lana wrote yesterday has much to do with me. Perhaps this is diagnosable 😉 but I’d hate to think I can’t wake up and write from whoever (or whatever) my writing voice is coming–Mary Astor, Little Bo Peep, or a sugar maple tee. Okay, maybe certifiable. 😉

By: Alissa Nielsen

Alissa Nielsen — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 23:50:00 +0000

Agreed. Great points, Jeannine. Especially about empathy and giving voice to the voiceless. Thanks for this post!

By: Jilly

Jilly — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:38:00 +0000

I don’t think that limiting your poetic options is practicing very good “creative hygiene” for yourself.

By: jeannine

jeannine — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:29:00 +0000

Thanks Peter, Collin, and Robert. I’m with you guys! Let Persona rock on!
Tom – good luck with the new baby, and thanks for the note!

By: Tom C. Hunley

Tom C. Hunley — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 13:06:00 +0000

Jeannine,

Thanks for the post. I wanted to comment on WOM-PO but am too busy and tired to get it right. My poem forthcoming in Triquarterly is from the pov of someone whose wife has cheated on him and left him due to pressures in their marriage that arose from losing a child to SIDS. When people ask me if that happened to me (it didn't) I tell them they're missing the point. One of my students called it a "James Frey" poem, but Frey's book was a memoir, so there's sort of a contract that says it really happened. I think people readily accept the narrative "I" in fiction because the contract there says the story didn't really happen; it's fiction. One thing I love about poetry is that it can swing back and forth between those two poles. The contract is "anything goes," more or less.

Okay, I guess that's about what I would have posted on WOM-PO, and maybe now I will.

Thanks for the shout-out on WOM-PO, too. It was so funny to open up the digest and see my name. That's another discussion I may stay out of, though I can see that her problem is the workshop model. She's not using techne, she's just letting the students write about whatever they want, left to their own resources. She really needs my book, _Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five Canon Approach_. I don't know how to tell her that without sounding like I'm self-promoting.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 23:57:00 +0000

Persona has been an accepted aspect of great poetry for centuries. Shame more people who claim to want to be able to write great poetry don’t actually read it. I’m giving a talk on Monday wherein I hope to lay some smack down. Nobody disses Li Po like that.

By: Collin

Collin — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 23:44:00 +0000

I’ve written a number of persona poems and will continue to do so. I hate those who try to limit poetry and put it back into a tiny little box of what is and isn’t acceptable. I say, write what you like, anyway you like.