In Class with Professor Ángel García
A primary mission of Frontier is to provide high quality resources and practical help for serious poets—so we’ve been reaching out to poetry professors to help give clarity to this strange journey and stranger craft. This month, we got the chance to hear from Ángel García, an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
What are the most common pitfalls you see students falling into as beginning writers?
One pitfall I notice is that beginning writers can prematurely become obsessed with discovering their “voice.” Often, this leads to a pattern of writing poems that speak to each other thematically and stylistically at a time when I think it’s important to experiment and exercise diverse approaches to poem-making. But like a snowball effect, this phenomenon can also lead to reading too narrowly. As important as it is to read widely and read deeply throughout one’s career, many beginning writers in pursuit of their voice also begin reading work that speaks to their own aesthetic or their personal experience exclusively. They become “experts,” so to speak in what they read and what they write, and conversely, dismiss what they don’t read and refuse the poems they might be otherwise inclined to write. While this narrow focus might serve writers well as they work on specific projects, this can be particularly harmful for beginning writers because it often cuts off the blood supply to diversity, variety, multivocality—their own as well as in the larger landscape of poetry.
What is the most common piece of writing advice you find yourself giving your students?
Because students so often think their lives or their imaginations don’t warrant an audience, I try to reassure students that their lives, their imaginations, and their experiences are valid fodder for poetry. Despite not having the tangible proof, I tell them that someone somewhere can and likely will connect to their work in a deep and meaningful way. And that to make than connection to someone else they should try to be as true to their art and who they are as writers. Whether they are writing about their own lives or fictionalized versions of their lives is unimportant. But they should show up to the page with as much honesty as they can bear to muster so that the connections they make with a reader or an audience are more powerful. All we might strive for in our work happens, most often, without our knowing. But it is that hope that keeps us writing.
What’s the best thing about teaching poetry?
I truly believe that every student can write a “good” poem: solid, evocative, innovative, etc. But what I love to watch happen for a student is when they discover the themes, approaches, and ancestries that propel their work beyond a singular poem. It’s not about a student finding their voice, because ideally that voice will change over time and entertain new depths and dimensions. Perhaps what I mean is when a student discovers their process. When a student begins or continues to find language compelling and obsesses over a line in a poem and the myriad ways they can approach and execute their ideas…that I think, is what makes teaching so rewarding.
What book of poetry / craft would you always recommend to new poets? (And why?)
For years now I’ve used Kim Addonizio’s Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within in intro classes. It’s accessible but goes deep. While it focuses on craft, more importantly perhaps, is explores process and considers the life of the writer. But what I love most at the core is how the book begins with the premise that we are all capable of genius: rather than believing genius is tied to what a writer produces, instead it suggests that our genius stems from our desire and obsessions with language. For newer poets, this is so contradictory to what they assume about poetry and poem-making being the exclusive terrain of “natural,” “gifted” poets. Rather than wait for an invitation to write, it says to them write anyway, and write as you are.
