A Testimonial for Refining Your Poetry Writing Skills


The workshop has been invaluable to me. I had "set aside" my intellectual self for too long, not reading much and certainly not writing. Since the workshop, I've been in the public library looking up poets and poetry mentioned by Tom Daley and by other classmates. I've started a rough journal to record passing phrases and ideas. And Tom's encouraging, honest, and thorough commmentary of my poems has allowed me to take myself as seriously as he does.

I think Tom's diligent, dedicated reading of all of our poems is instructive. I know that when he admits to being confused by one of my poems or someone else's, that it is not to be taken lightly. A rewrite is in order. (Whenever I was confounded by someone's poem, I knew that Tom would--after researching historical allusions, mythological creatures, and just plain unusual vocabulary--come up with a possible explanation.)

I'm impressed by the amount of time Tom put into his lectures and commentary. His responses to our poems were, in fact, complete essays that included the full text of poems he thought would be instructive. I appreciated that he sometimes included examples of Syliva Plath's poetry in commenting on my poems (trying to show me how I could have done it a bit better), someone I had said I admired in my own Personal Description. The depth and breadth of his knowledge of poetry is impressive--he can and does relate student poems to both giants of poetry and to current poets writing today.

The lectures were extremely helpful to me; I love to learn anything new and I ate them up. They are certainly "graduate-level" instruction, and I feel like I got a big "bang" for my buck.

I loved it when a discussion of a poem really got going with people arguing or commenting back and forth. I wish I'd commented more on other people's poems because I know how appreciative (and just plain excited) I was when a class member took the time to comment and think about my poem.

Catherine Broderick


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