Writing Cringe for My Poetry Workshop
Freeing myself from the need to be good has invigorated my writing
I have a very specific writing project in mind, among the twenty thousand writing projects I have in mind: I want to write a poetry collection about my two-week stint in the hospital. Or a chapbook, now that I know the difference between the two LOL. (For the longest time, I thought they were self-published zines that just happened to be full of poems. That is not the case.) I am not, however, a poet. I scribbled some emo-rific verses in the margins of my school notebooks and journals, probably about some crush who is now balding and ranting about questionable politics, back when I was in high school, but quickly abandoned the genre when I realized that I could not keep a sentence to less than fifty words. I mean, just look at this last one. I love myself a run-on sentence. I’ve made a career out of it.
Why this project came to me as a poetry collection is a mystery; maybe it’s one more symptom of the mild PTSD that is propping up here and there, and that I observe with wry curiosity. More emotionally in tune people would probably argue that the experience was so overwhelming on a spiritual and emotional level that a straightforward narrative cannot hold. Plus, languishing on a bed with a feeding tube down your nose doesn’t lend itself to a lot of action lol. I can’t find the tweet or thread or IG post or whatever where I read Vanessa Angélica Villarreal’s definition of poetry but the general vibe was that poetry begins when words fail and welp, words still fail me when I try to synthesize everything that happened to me between March 2023 and April 2023, culminating in a life-threatening condition so rare, there isn’t a dedicated subreddit about it. (I’ve looked.)
Maybe this is what processing looks like.
In any case, I signed up for a workshop called “No Idea but in Things” with the very delightful and supportive Miller Oberman at Brooklyn Poets. I liked that the workshop was focused on objects as inspiration since that felt accessible and doable as a very newbie poet, and since everything about the hospital was so sensorial, in horrible and beautiful ways, or extremely deprived of certain sensorial experiences that made it even more disturbing. My opinion of English-language poetry also changed for the better when I worked at a bookstore and spent hours reading modernist and contemporary poets during the lulls in my shift.
Also, I’m still recovering from the nightmare that was learning rhyme and meter in college, which was very different from the rhyme and meter of Spanish-language poetry. While the super bitchy instructor tried to show me what beats meant in the Shakespearean age, I sat there dumbfounded at the idea that I was supposed to learn rhythm from one of the most rhythmically-challenged cultures on Earth, but I digress.
Thankfully, this workshop could give two craps about that kind of formality. Miller gave us in-class writing exercises and weekly homework assignments, but there was a sense of play and experimentation that permeated those five weeks. Maybe because I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn’t overthink it, I just had to take stabs at it and hope that it wasn’t coming off as something out of a Hallmark card. Paying attention to objects helped eliminate a lot of that flowery, pat language many beginning poets pull out of their asses in a panic. When I was stuck, I went back to the idea of just describing the object in the poem. When I say object, I really do mean it! No abstract terms. One of my poems was about a boiled egg. Another was about a get-well card.
Even when I ventured into deeper, thornier territory, I trained myself to look for objects to ground all those feeeeeelings. I’m not a writer who obsesses over the precise word in a sentence. For better or for worse, I go for a general vibe of a sentence instead of one term, even though I do try to hone each mot when I edit. To force myself to pay attention to each one of my choices was a good reminder of how the economy of language can make a short, brief line pulsate with intensity.
While this is great and all, what kept my butt in the chair was how easily I could make a messy first draft and how productive and fulfilling it felt to then tinker away, adding one word here, and deleting one word there. There is something freeing about knowing I’ll be god awful at something, ridding myself of the pressure and shame from the endeavor. There was something motivating about seeing how I improved, every week, little by little.
When I wrote my first banger—and I say that without irony, you know when you have gold in your hands—, I felt the same long-lost thrill I felt when I wrote my first story as a kid. Like I had untapped a secret, magical power that could never be taken away from me. Like I had transcended my puny, small life through sheer will.
I’m going to keep working on these poems, amassing terrible/mid/exquisite verses, and seeing where this takes me. I have the delusion of an amateur with the weathered, tough skin of a crone. I’m way past being shy or cautious about my writing, even when it’s cringe.
Homework
Try a different genre, method, medium, topic, category, etc. of whatever your chosen craft is. Choose one you’re particularly inexperienced in or think you are actively bad at. Let yourself suck in the most cringe-tastic ways possible. Have fun.
State of My Wallet
July Invoiced: $3,999.96
July Received: $3,518
This should be the last month of lackluster cash flow, now that I’ve fully transitioned into my part-time gig and clients are coming back from the summertime lull. However, I don’t know whether this section is useful to you anymore (if “you” happen to be living in the United States on a freelance income). I’ve made the executive decision to spend a significant amount of time in cheaper regions of the world and I’m not paying rent anytime soon. In other words, my financial decisions aren’t being guided by a desperate need to hit over 10K lest I fall into ruin and get evicted. You cannot live off these amounts in the States, even in the small town Tim Walz sprouted from. In the US, you need at least 10K. For real. But in most Latin American cities? About half of that and only if you want to live like you’re in your Brat Summer Luxe Era. Let me know in the comments below if you have any opinions on the matter.
Progress Report
A lit journal rejected what I call my ceviche essay, even though it worked perfectly for their food issue hehe. The silver lining is that the submission forced me to pare it down to less than 6,500 words, which is a word limit for a lot of journals. As opposed to its original 9000-ish form. Going to keep submitting that baby until someone recognizes its genius. I’m waiting to hear back from an anthology submission. Translation work picked up the last two weeks and my new part-time gig went from “chill” to “churning” in that same timeframe. I’ve been busy!
Shameless Self-Promotion
Hey, New York! I’m sharing my poetry for the first time ever at the Brooklyn Poets Summer Workshop Showcase on Friday, August 16 at 6:30 pm. The event is free but registration is strongly encouraged. There’s also a Zoom option. On Monday, August 19 at 7 pm I’ll be at the Don’t Get Naked Reading Series at friendly neighborhood gay bar Branded Saloon. Hope to see you there!
Chicago, I’m coming for you too! I’m performing at CHIRP’s First Time on Wednesday, Sept 4 at 7:30 pm at Martyr’s and Funny Ha-Ha on Friday, Sept 13 at 6 pm at The Hideout. I might add one or two shows to that packed schedule too.
Unlocked, a monthly curated selection of content from the BIPOC writing group Locked In, selected my “Personal History of La Mar” for their third issue. This makes me so happy because it’s an essay I worked on quite a bit, knowing full well that it wouldn’t be an obvious topic of choice for most Substack readers. I encourage you to peruse the rest of the selections too. Substack can feel soooooooooooooo moneyed-white-American-urban-bubble. but this has been a fantastic way to discover voices from all over the world.
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