Personal Portfolio Reflections

Ted Mallory

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Personal Portfolio Review

I'm not sure what I was expecting when we first started the IWP. I was hoping to be more productive in terms of essays and perhaps fiction, but instead seemed to be a burgeoning poet. 

As of yesterday I was discouraged because I thought that I had failed to take full advantage of the luxury of having time to write, yet Marty seems to imply that I've been quite prolific. 

Initially I was nervous about how applicable the class might be for me and how much I'd be able to contribute since I was the only non-English teacher in the group. My worries were all unfounded because this may well have been the most valuable class for my teaching and professional development that I've taken since I was an undergrad. The amount of applicable and pertinent information and discussion has amazed me.

I have written at least eight new poems and three or four new essays. I also submitted several other pieces for peer and instructor response/input including a couple of poems, a column, an essay and the beginnings of a fiction piece.

I feel much more confident as a poet. In college a couple of my Art professors told me that I seemed to have a good innate sense of design, although my execution needed polish. I feel like I am becoming more comfortable with my instincts in poetry, like my sense of rhythm, where to put a line break, and how to conclude a piece so that it's beginning relates to it's conclusion.  

Maybe because one of the biggest things I gained from the class has been that writing doesn't have to be for an audience, published, or persuasive- I have allowed myself to explore poetry in ways that I previously would've shyed away from. I used to think that poetry had only two practitioners; highly educated intelligentsia who understood and knew how to write it following strict forms and guidelines and pretentious, college students who were trying too hard to be self expressive and non-conformist who only wrote about death and dying and depression. 

What I've learned is that writing is a way of processing thoughts and feelings, a "cognitive strategy," if you will. Poetry is a comfortable, pliable, sometimes impressionistic, sometimes expressive, sometimes abstract and analytical method for me to process.  At once rapid and fluid like a sketch, meanwhile allowing for layers and nuance like a painting. 

Before this month, I felt pedestrian as a poet, guilty that so much of my poetry was stream-of-consciousness writing, embarrassed that it was too awkward or obtuse. This class, between the time and deliberate focus on writing, what I've learned about process and re-writing, and the huge amount of feedback from classmates, instructors, and online cohorts at the eAnthology- has helped me "get my sea-legs." I'm feeling much more comfortable, not to mention confident in all of my writing, but perhaps especially my poetry.

I knew that reading makes for better writers. This class really proved to me how much writing makes you a better reader. I am much more infatuated with the idea of reading that ever before. IWP has really expanded my palate. I once wanted to just read essays and mysteries, and I was a very picky reader. Now I actually crave short stories, memoirs, and other people's poetry. I used to prefer profound classics and road-tested pop-culture. Now my menu is opened to unpublished works, blogs, and new writing and academic writing.