{"id":6061,"date":"2012-08-17T08:00:29","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=6061"},"modified":"2012-08-10T00:24:07","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T04:24:07","slug":"on-poetry-potlucks-part-iii-guests-perspective-elaine-wang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/17\/on-poetry-potlucks-part-iii-guests-perspective-elaine-wang\/","title":{"rendered":"On Poetry Potlucks, Part III – Guest’s Perspective (Elaine Wang)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Poetry<\/a>
“I think part of the acceptance . . . comes from the potluck part, from the cakes and the dumplings. If you\u2019re a decent human being, it\u2019s almost impossible to not be kind with people with whom you\u2019ve just broken bread.”\u2014Elaine Wang<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Guest Curated By Neil Aitken<\/strong><\/p>\n

For this installment of “On Poetry Potlucks,” our guest curator Neil has invited Elaine Wang, one of the guests at his very first poetry potluck (and an\u00a0<\/em>LR Issue 1 contributor<\/a>)<\/em>, to reflect upon her experience. In today’s post, Elaine regales us with a tale of cake; rocks and mysterious masseuses; and the solace that she found through the group of sympathetic strangers gathered there.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

There is so much cake.<\/p>\n

I am at Neil\u2019s first ever poetry potluck, and I\u2019m mostly wondering how three people are going to eat two full-sized cakes.\u00a0 And these are optimal<\/em> condition cakes\u2014one is a green tea roll with icing inside and the other gently sandwiches layers of jellied fruit.<\/p>\n

I think I ate four pieces of cake that night, and that was just dessert.\u00a0 Neil had made his famous sweet potato dumplings for dinner.<\/p>\n

But more on the poetry part and less on the potluck part\u2014after spending some time catching up and getting to know one another, Neil led Ngoc and I through a generative writing exercise designed to find the \u201cheart of the poem\u201d through bringing together seemingly disparate pieces of our lives and finding their points of contact.<\/p>\n

I learned that I am obsessed with doors and a rock.\u00a0 Not rocks, a single small, smooth rock.\u00a0 Namely, the scented, wet rock a massage therapist had laid in the hole where my clavicles meet after an almost two and a half hour massage. \u00a0The massage was only supposed to be an hour and a half, but the massage therapist later commented that he had lost track of time because he had been so immersed in working on my body because it was in one of the best conditions of his clients (at this point of my life, I had been dancing more regularly in jazz and ballet).\u00a0 I had felt it, too.\u00a0 The whole session felt like a weird, non-sexual but completely physical communion. \u00a0For the next two weeks I was wracked with the following questions: Did he just leave rocks in everyone\u2019s necks?\u00a0 Was this a secret come-on, since it\u2019s so taboo in professional massage therapist\/client relations?\u00a0 If I went back to try and find him (I didn\u2019t know his name, and I got the massage through a Groupon), would they throw me out and would I be tagged on some sort of creeper list?<\/p>\n

Ngoc told me straight-out, no holds barred, that I should go back and find him. Remember, this is a woman I just met that night.\u00a0 After I confided this story, she didn\u2019t judge me, she didn\u2019t think I was a creeper, and she didn\u2019t even find it weird that I was obsessing over it (I am, by nature, an obsessive person).\u00a0\u00a0 Neil didn\u2019t think I should go find him, but he agreed with her that this absolutely should be in a poem, somehow.<\/p>\n

This<\/em> is the true <\/em>genius of poetry potlucks\u2014I can meet strangers<\/em> that get<\/em> me.\u00a0 I can meet friends that get me.\u00a0 And I can talk with them about the freaky, creepy, scary, crazy things that life, and therefore poems, are made of, and these people understand and welcome that.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t happen in \u201creal\u201d life.\u00a0 Sadly, it\u2019s even rare in the workshops and classes that I have experienced.\u00a0 I think part of the acceptance and camaraderie comes from the potluck part, from the cakes and the dumplings.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a decent human being, it\u2019s almost impossible to not be kind with people with whom you\u2019ve just broken bread.\u00a0 You\u2019ve already shared something tangible, given and received nourishment in a physical way.\u00a0 The potluck is a prototype of sorts, an unconscious pattern of customs already set in place for the second half of the evening, the more vulnerable part.\u00a0 The small number of attendees also helps make it a more intimate setting. \u00a0Most of the prose and poetry workshops I\u2019ve been in have been in more formal, academic environments and therefore always carried an undercurrent of competition.\u00a0 In one particularly cutthroat workshop I attended, everyone wanted to be THE most brilliant writer in the room, and also THE most witty critic.\u00a0 \u00a0This led to harsh criticism on every piece that everyone submitted\u2014I remember one person mockingly said, as feedback, that my story was exactly like \u201cDawson\u2019s Creek.\u201d \u00a0Maybe the story did have some resemblance (I\u2019ve never watched that show, so I have no bearing on the feedback\u2019s veracity), but looking back, it\u2019s easy to see the comment was said to incite laughs\u2014it\u2019s harder to see how it was helpful to me, the writer.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that supposed the whole point of a workshop?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it supposed to be of help to the writer?<\/p>\n

Workshops are hard.\u00a0 It\u2019s scary to share your work.\u00a0 It\u2019s painful to hear criticism.\u00a0 It\u2019s tiring to read others\u2019 work with a critical yet gentle eye, all the while also taking the time to get to know individual voice and style.\u00a0 To say things that are actually helpful. \u00a0To join in the collaborative dance of helping each other dig out the heart of the work from what\u2019s already on the page. \u00a0But somehow, it\u2019s a lot easier when there\u2019s food and friends.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Elaine Wang holds a BA in English with an emphasis on creative writing.\u00a0\u00a0 Originally from Texas, she now lives and writes in Los Angeles. \u00a0She never went back to find the aforementioned man.<\/em><\/p>\n

To see the other posts in Neil Aitken’s guest-curated series, “On Poetry Potlucks,” click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Curated By Neil Aitken For this installment of “On Poetry Potlucks,” our guest curator Neil has invited Elaine Wang, one of the guests at his very first poetry potluck (and an\u00a0LR Issue 1 contributor), to reflect upon her experience. In today’s post, Elaine regales us with a tale of cake; rocks and mysterious masseuses; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[20,337],"tags":[896,1052,894],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6061"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6064,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061\/revisions\/6064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}