from Jessica Johnson: untitled vignette

The first time I was in a creative writing workshop, I was nineteen at a state flagship university. The professor poet was famous—I didn’t appreciate how famous—and cranky. He brought in poems. He asked us to bring in poems. Mostly he praised the poems he brought and eviscerated the ones we brought, whether they were written by ourselves or others. He sometimes brought in famous poems and explained why they were not in fact good.

He missed quite a few classes. One morning while we waited, a student said, “Maybe he died.” We collectively chuckled, gesturing less at his demise and more at our shared experience of him, which we hadn’t so far had a chance to signal to each other.

He was angry when he was eviscerating. His face went red and he pounded his middle finger on his table. There was one student I thought was “good” because he could create an attitude and atmosphere. He brought in a poem about girls in a bar. The famous, cranky poet—who was quite old—criticized the student-poet’s portrayal of reality: “You mean to tell me there are places where young women go out unaccompanied?” Even now, I’m not sure if he was messing with us. A similar thing happened with a student’s rhymed and metered poem containing the word “despicable.” The famous poet insisted that the stress should have been on the “des” instead of the “pic” and therefore it was the wrong choice of word in the line, and didn’t everyone know that the stress in “despicable” was on the first syllable?

Once I brought in a poem of my own that he liked. He said he would publish it in the journal that he edited. (I didn’t know at the time how old and well known this journal was.) He said the poem was good, but that I had no idea why it was and that I should talk to him after class. After class, I walked right by him. He did not publish the poem.

The lessons: That publication seemed to be the point of all this. That self-awareness wasn’t necessarily part of being a successful writer. That I would draw a line around myself as a person. That there would be people, perhaps many, that I would not deal with. And—despite my disdain for the man, despite his obvious eccentricity, despite the comical arbitrariness with which he wielded his power—I concluded that I was talented.


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In that workshop there was a girl. She sat in front; I sat in back. I mostly saw the back of her and heard her voice, muffled. She had long, light hair. Unlike the guy poet I felt an affinity with, she wasn’t cool. She had country clothes, the uncool kind of T-shirt, the uncool kind of jeans.

When she was supposed to share with the class a poem that she liked, she brought in a rhymed and metered one about the Lord. She said it was a poem that she had memorized. It is possible that she invoked her family. As she read it, cleanly and clearly, I pictured tall people seated around a table.

I could feel a gathering storm behind the poet’s eyebrows. When she was finished, he exploded: “This! This is doggerel verse!”

The lesson, of course: it was a shameful thing to like.

I was glad not to be her, glad not to like it. But I also knew that when she walked away from that room there would be people for her to go back to who also knew and loved that poem about the Lord.