My wife, Marilyn, is a graduate of Stony Brook University with a B.A. in English. She is a published poet in several reputable journals including Soundings, the literary journal of her alma mater. For the past five years, she has been a resident of ARTIS Senior Living as an Alzheimer's patient. During that time, she was an active participant in a poetry workshop initiated by Jess Inman... Marilyn looked forward to the weekly sessions in an activity close to her heart. I give complete credit to Jess for establishing the workshop, and for the creative ways in which she elicited verbal contributions from the participants. Together, they crafted poems about those things that mattered to them -- events and experiences that they recalled from their distant past. I observed several of those sessions, and marveled at Jess' ability to motivate the attending residents to participate with such enthusiasm.
I’ve loved every second of this class...
More than anything I feel like I’ve grown in my ability and willingness to experiment and fail. I often struggle with new ideas and how to implement them because my experience in writing academically has forced this idea into my head that if I can’t nail something on the first try, I won’t be able to do it at all. I stuck to the same templates and the same rehashed ideas without anything new or interesting to try. In this class I’ve experimented more than I ever have before with my writing. I’m also starting to learn how to take failure in stride as a lesson for my next attempt at it rather than as a reprimand telling me to never try it again... I hope to maintain the writing schedule and work ethic I’ve learned in this class for all my future classes and for my own creative endeavors. Setting aside time to write each day like this course has forced me to do has gotten me back into the groove of writing, and I’ve never been happier with my original work than I am now.
Definitely the main thing I’ve gained from this course is the ability to continue writing even when you feel you shouldn’t or that it’s not good enough. I hadn’t realized it but I’d fallen into a slump of not writing, mostly because I felt I wasn’t ‘ready’ or that I lacked ‘inspiration.’ It was like I was waiting for something to ignite, which, if I’d waited for that, I would’ve been waiting for along time, since it still hasn’t really happened. Plus, now that I’ve begun writing again, I feel more inspired all the time. It’s like I’ve changed the lenses of my glasses, and now I see the world from a writer’s perspective again. And, since this class also gives elements of stories, I have more pieces to work to incorporate into my own writing than I’d had before. Previously I would write intuitively and what felt right, but now I know what’s acceptable and what strengthens writing.
... I wanted to explore more creative writing, which was why I signed up for this class. I must say that I am very thankful and happy that I signed up for this course because I love writing now more than ever. I find so much therapy in it and I have even been encouraging my friends to write things out when they are going through tough times.
I’ve been reading more poetry and writing short stories in my journal and I really like how it makes me process the things that are going on around me. I feel like I have a new perspective on things and that I am able to look back and see how I have changed and remember places and things that happened through my writing.
I am really looking forward (to) writing more and perhaps one day getting published, even if it is in a small online magazine....As I continue writing, I hope to apply what I have learned in this class. I think that going to a happy place and being intentional about writing is very important. I really loved what you said about how no one can take writing away from you.
