Workshop expectations

[UselessBlueprint]

This attitude drives me nuts.

It doesn't matter whether or not you can tell a villanelle from an ice cream cone, if the refrain annoys you or seems unnecessary you should say so. If you think the poem is strengthened by the refrains you should say so. I am an ameteur reader and writer but I still know when a line, or more, grabs me or falls flat. The wonderful learning experience of this site is, for me, having to think about why my response is what it is and trying to express this. It is a deeper level of reading, and through that my own work has grown a bit. I originally joined here to learn how to edit a few of what I thought were my better poems, something I had never done. That is actually dwarfed compared to my inceased reading skills. I didn't know it then, but now I view the structure of this site as brilliant, it expects one to be what they never knew they could be.

When I post my own work, a total dissection from Tom is a priceless gift, some of which I can absorb and sometimes implement. He certainly makes me examine my choices. When milo suggests I reconsider a word, a line or an idea, I damn well better if I want the poem to work on the best level it can. When he says it's a mess it doesn't mean it's trash, just that I need to do it better.
When someone's crit is a few lines long but mentions even just one word that pulled them into the poem or pushed them out it is tremendously helpful to me and when several members mention that one word it certainly effects my edit. It really doesn't matter what level their own skills are on, we are all readers with reactions that can help the poet understand how their poem is coming across.
I have forced the lovely members of the Pen to suffer through an entire page on the word abacus.    But the poem gained from it.

Writers who don't want their work poked at should hang it on their fridge and enjoy it, nothing wrong with that, but a heartfelt string of cliches is still a string of cliches and I am grateful to the members who take the time to critique it instead of just clicking on. Styles of critiquing vary, some harsher, some gentler, but for me that's part of what makes this a community that holds my interest.

I came here because I wanted to improve. I grew sick of the mindless praise given to every word that I saw on the "forums" or whatever they were where I previously shared my writing. I value other's critiques a lot -- but as learning is, I acknowledge my mistakes, I just tend to dwell on them more than some might. I also can't consider myself artistic, possibly because I have no idea what being artistic is, and therefore I feel like I am perpetually a novice when experiencing any art.

Meanwhile, @aschueler...
I've taken one poetry course in college, and I can honestly say it taught me nothing about how to write. Most of it was recognizing the use of rhetorical devices, many of which I knew from reading Catullus and Sappho in high school. Some days, we actually learned a fair bit of trivia and admired paintings. But as far as writing, we had "imitation poems" designed to demonstrate our abilities to copy a poet's "style."