Lynne Viti called this the ‘core group’ of the class, though she noted there is room for three or four more members.
By James Kinneen
Hometown Weekly Reporter
After exclusively meeting on Zoom because of the pandemic, last Tuesday night at the Westwood Library, the Westwood Poet’s Writing Group met in person for the first time. Led by Lynne Viti, a published author and senior lecturer emerita in the Writing Program at Wellesley College, the members of the group each presented a poem to be read aloud and discussed by the members based on a predetermined theme.
While the subjects and poetry styles were very different, the poets were given a theme about which they had to write. One of the earlier themes was family, which Viti said led to some sad poems, so she tried to provide themes that would lead to more upbeat poems in the following weeks. After tasking the poets with writing a poem about the outdoors the week before, this week’s theme was all about color, with the prompt specifying: “Write a poem that uses a particular color as a visual focus for your reader/listener. Make the way your poem shows this color manifested in the external world part of something (or several things) specific. In other words, no poems about color in the abstract.” The example cited was William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow.”
The way the group works is straightforward. One of the assembled passes out a copy of their poem to every member, everyone reads, the author speaks it aloud, and the assembled then go around a table, one at a time, to discuss it.
But while the members of the group workshopped their work, a few issues arose that only a veteran poet, like Viti, would recognize.
One of those issues on the day regarded song lyrics. One poet’s work used a couple lyrics from various songs, which Viti explained can actually cause big problems when you try and publish your work. Interestingly, using a song title does not cause the same headaches as using lyrics from within the song does, so that’s considered okay.
Background knowledge of one’s readers was another issue that came up. When one poem referenced using shamrocks to teach the Catholic trinity, the group discussed whether a note explaining the concept was necessary. Viti herself explained she’d dealt with the same issue in the past, particularly when she wrote a poem about Vodnik, the Czech water spirit, and when she wrote a poem based around a Herman Maril painting as part of a festival, but recognized the poem wouldn’t always accompany the painting when she wanted to add it to a collection on which she was working.
The group will meet every other Tuesday until the middle of May, and will pick up again after the summer. Viti also noted that while there is a limit as to how big the group could be, currently, it could add three or four more people and be fine.
If you’d like to join, next week, the group will be using John Tobias’ “Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received From a Friend Called Felicity” as its sample poem, with the theme being objects, and the prompt declaring: “Write a poem about an inanimate object you got as a gift, or something that is in your home placed where you might notice it or pass by it without noticing, every day. What meaning does it have for you now, and has this changed from the day you acquired it?”
