Workshop Reflection

I think a big part of poetry is finding meaning from ambiguity. By allowing people to explain their thoughts on a piece you get an excellent idea of how thoughts move- what ideas are obvious and which are not. I think the first few minutes of discussion were the most useful, as it showed people's original thoughts before taking ideas from others, so in those first few minutes you get a perfect glance into precisely what you work looks like from the outside.
I personally think that twenty minutes is ultimately unnecessary. The first five-ten minutes are sufficient to capture ideas but not long enough that the ideas become too convoluted. The initial ideas are always the most accurate.

Decision Making Blog Post

     Reflect on how your team chose its mentor text. How do you feel the discussion went? How do you feel about your own role in the decision? Explain one way the decision could have gone better.

     I think this was a very fast decision. We selected a poem that many liked, confirmed that no one had any serious complaints about it, and then gave it a stamp of approval, without considering many of the other choices to a serious degree. I won't say it was a bad choice, it's just that, well, it wasn't thought about for very long.
     I'd also like to question our decision to expect one candidate poem from each member of the group. Rather than letting people suggest as we went along, asking for fifteen different poems meant there were too many poems to consider, which, of course, further reduced our time to decide.
     I'll admit, I'm somewhat poor at contribution to group discussion.