18 Workshop Letter Instructions and Example: Elena Carter 2016
General format:
- Start with a few sentences in which you do your best to describe what the essay is about and/or where in the essay you find the greatest tension. In other words, where do you feel most suspense? What makes you want to keep reading the essay?
- Follow this with a middle section in which you identify out a point/s of confusion or an aspect/s of the essay that could be improved.
- Finally, give the writer suggestions for resolving the above issue/s. Your suggestions could also include “do more of this…” etc. It can be useful for the writer to read comments about what’s working as well as what’s not working!
- Your final letter should be between 200 and 400 words. I’ll give you feedback on your letters midway through the semester.
Sample Letter from a colleague:
Hello _________,
Obviously the poem does a great job establishing its tension right up front: our narrator is trying to come to terms with the death of a loved one, which we realize later is his grandmother. The poem starts with adoration of her strength and love for him. The first “turn” in the poem comes with the line “You see, death comes around uncontrollably” which transitions into the narrator saying people should feel however they want, but that there’s good that comes out of death (in this case, the poem itself) and that the people we love never really leave.
The main question I have about this piece is the last four or five lines. I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but I sense a slight darkening here from the poem’s otherwise joyous tone. We get this mention of “temptation” and something you think you need, which has sort of an ominous ring to it. This combined with “We gotta do better” and the last line “As long as we let her . . .” makes me sense a fear or anxiety stalking around the edge of the poem, that the narrator is nervous about something that would take him away from his grandmother’s presence. From the poem, I’m not quite sure what the narrator is afraid of or what would take his grandmother’s memory away. I wonder if there’s a way the poem can subtly imply what that might be. It might work particularly well if the poem can drop the hint earlier on, and then our reader can connect it to this fear when we get to the end.
Other than that, I found myself making slight cuts and edits to the poem in the earlier lines. I don’t want to mess up the rhythms and voice you’ve got going on here, because they are so lovely and powerful. But I do think that sometimes staying in a sort of simple emotional mode (like adoration) can lose the reader’s interest. I think the poem counteracts that best when the language is surprising (“tough like tougher than . . . “) and when the details very specific to this particular woman (like the quotes of what she says to you). I’d watch out for places where the poem gets more general and the language more predictable and consider trimming it down. For example I found myself cutting “Her love? So genuine/ Her spirit? Very much heaven sent”, because I felt like I’d heard these phrases before and I got a sense of her love and spirit from other places in the poem. Does that make sense?
Great job here! Let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
_____________