How to: Take Criticism Well with Rebecca Levi

In this series, we interview our tutors about poetry and its place in their world. These interviews will cover creative writing tips, excelling in a poetry workshop, building a literary career, and finding your poetic voice. Here’s Rebecca Levi on how to take criticism well.

Why do you think it’s important for writers, particularly poets, to be open to criticism?

For me, all writing exists as a sort of prism, but especially poetry: a poem isn’t just words on the page, it’s the voice in the mouth of the reader, the intent in the head of the poet, the terrible whiteness of the page around the poem, what isn’t said between the lines, etc. All these perspectives make the poem, and it would be impossible for the poet to imagine all of them on their own. 

On a more human note, poetry is a communal art; it was born that way, much more so than fiction. We need community around us to give our poems life. 

And on a practical note: How often have you beat your head against a wall trying to move a poem into its next incarnation? Criticism is an open door, a way out and forward. 

Can you share with us any feedback/criticism you’ve had on your work, and how you have responded? 

I wrote a poem about a topic that was very emotional to me, and it was received coldly, analytically. At first, I walked home raging against the insensitivity of my fellow poets. Eventually, I realized that my emotion was actually blocking the poem; I needed to strip the poem back and simply tell the story, so they could bring their own feelings to it.

What strategies do you use to separate yourself from your work when receiving feedback?

It’s hard. In a way, glowing praise is harder than negative feedback, because I can say “well this (not very good) poem doesn’t represent me”, but as soon as they love it, my mind goes “they love me!”. So, I don’t have a particularly good strategy, other than to be aware of the ego when it creeps (or saunters) in.

How do you decide which pieces of criticism to take on board and which to disregard? What role does community play in receiving and giving criticism, especially within a workshop context?

I think the first step is trust, which sounds cheesy but is true. If I don’t trust a group, I won’t be listening deeply to them. That trust can be built fairly quickly, as long as it’s done intentionally, and good boundaries are set for feedback and sharing. More specifically, I think I am biased to more quickly believe criticism given by people I like and/or trust, but I’ve found that sometimes it can be interesting to dig into the criticism of the people you don’t particularly resonate with. In those moments, I think “it’s for the good of the poem,” and if I let it, a piece of feedback I eyed sceptically can end up jolting the poem into being.

What advice would you give to new poets who are struggling to accept criticism without feeling discouraged?

Write more. It’s easier to accept feedback when you have a bunch of poems you’ve been writing and are elbow-deep in the process, compared to if you’ve polished just a single pearl, only to offer it up and BAM. It’s also easier to separate self and poem when you have lots of poems. If you write a bad poem, you’ve still written a poem! Embrace the bad poems. Keep going.

Rebecca Levi is a poet, translator, musician, and educator based in the Rivers Region of Chile. Originally from New York City, she studied comparative literature at Yale University and poetry with Robert Pinsky at Boston University. Her poems and translations have been published in journals such as Columbia Journal and No Tokens Magazine, by Princeton University Press and Broadstone Books, and in The Times Literary Supplement as a runner-up of the Mick Imlah Poetry Prize. Rebecca composes and performs folk, rock, and experimental music, often in collaboration with dance and performance. She has been an educator for sixteen years, with a focus in youth orchestra, early childhood music, and creative writing, and her teaching has taken her around the world, from Peru to Colombia to India. Rebecca teaches in English, Spanish, and Italian. 

Rebecca is teaching her new online course Le Poetesse: Transreading Contemporary Italian Verse with us next Spring, starting on Tuesday 21 January 2025.