The Art of the Critique: Cultivating Your Writing Eye with Andy Dehnart

Welcome to the debut episode of The Loft Lit Pod! Host Chris Jones sits down with writer and media critic Andy Dehnart to explore the evolving role of cultural criticism, how to analyze media with a sharp eye, and why engaging with criticism strengthens your own creative writing. Plus, a poem from Ty Chapman and we preview an exciting upcoming weekend at the Loft featuring poet and performer Hieu Minh Nguyen.

Show Notes & Links

TV Criticism

Discover Your Inner Critic: An Intro to Criticism with Andy Dehnart: https://loft.org/classes/discover-your-inner-critic-intro-criticism

List of TV Critics via Surf.Social: https://surf.social/feed/surf%2Fcustom%2F01kvv32x8nx6mjbeckw2p64qf7

Hieu Minh Nguyen Weekend

The Fire is Here: Staying Still with Hieu Minh Nguyen and special guests Danez Smith and Aurora Masum-Javed (Sep 12): https://loft.org/events/fire-here-staying-still-hieu-minh-nguyen

Forge Craft Seminar with Hieu Minh Nguyen (Sep 12): https://loft.org/classes/forge-craft-seminar-hieu-minh-nguyen-little-rooms-poetics-inventory-and-curation

Books to Pick Up

Witness: Poems to Address the Past, Present, and Future of Policing: https://lernerbooks.com/shop/show/26968

Support the Loft

Support Our Community: Become a Friend of the Loft: https://loft.org/join-support

Join the Loft's free Digital Community, the Loft Writing Network: https://loft-lit.circle.so/Loft-Writing-Network

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:03

Welcome to episode one of the Loft Lit Pod, a brand new podcast space created by the Loft, where words catch fire. I'm Chris Jones, the Loft's Director of Community Engagement, and I'm excited to welcome you to the first episode. If you're new to the Loft, welcome. We're based in Minneapolis and we are one of the nation's premier literary arts centers. We are dedicated to advancing the power of writers and readers to craft and share stories, to create and celebrate connections, and to build just life-sustaining communities. Whether you're a lifelong reader, an aspiring author working on a first draft, or a seasoned writer looking for fresh inspiration, this podcast is designed with you in mind. Expect in-depth interviews, behind-the-scenes looks, book recommendations, and practical publishing and writing tips. Before we get to our main interview, I wanted to give you a taste of some recent Loft programming. On August 19th, we hosted the event Loft Connect Live. This is a poem read by Ty Chapman from a new book that he co-edited along with Ari Tyson, titled Witness: Poems to Address the Past, Present, and Future of Policing. This book also, I might add, includes beautiful artwork by Damon Davis. And now, here's the poem by Ty.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

So this poem, um, because I actually wrote this one, I can give you a little bit of context and background. Uh I wrote this poem uh for the Twin Cities, but specifically for the Rondo neighborhood, um, which uh I assume many of us know uh was split in half during the construction of a highway. Um I wrote about this subject not only because I love my city and I love that neighborhood, and I think it's important to talk about it and important to talk about it on potentially a national scale. Um it is a very common story, and the more I got around the nation traveling for school visits, visiting colleges, so on and so forth, the more I saw evidence of that everywhere. It's in New York, it's in Texas, it's all over the country. Um and that is why I wanted to write this poem. They tried to bury the neighborhood. But ain't we still here? Stubborn and lovely, so many dandelions sprouting fuzzy heads, catching wind and drifting skylines. Ain't they try to sunder bud from stem to pave lands we grow from, fragment and border, bury all that's soft and giving. Ain't we still here? Corralled by crosswalks, high rises in I-94, ain't there more granola shops than ma shops and soil we made roots? Ain't the dirt we sprang from turning dry, bitter and stingy, don't it take more than give? Names drifting tween breezes, autumn leaves, brought from distant land, then oft, wigs blown back, still budding for false prophecies, spectroside, boys good and old wilt grows to patches, but ain't we still here? Blooming through potholes, reaching for sun touched skylines, digging toes in earth that's soft and giving. Ain't the elders teach us how to lay new roots? Digging deep and spreading, a coupling network spell Floyd Town, Castilland, Wrightville, pavement cracked and buckling, new growth surging for fresh air. Ain't we still here?

SPEAKER_03 3:38

This recording was from our August 19th event, as I mentioned, which also featured readings by Annika Fajardo and Emily Bright. This is a regular series that we are producing called Loft Connect Live, and it helps celebrate uh the work that emerges out of Loft Programming. Uh so look for our next one coming uh to you soon, and be sure to attend because these are really fabulous celebrations of the kind of new work and a showcase of all the talent emerging out of the Loft programming. But for now, I'd like to shift our attention to our feature interview. Today we're sharing our conversation with Andy Dennert. Andy is a leading TV critic, writer, and vice president of the Television Critics Association. He joins us today to talk about the evolving role of cultural criticism, how to analyze media with a sharp eye, and maybe most importantly, why writing criticism is great for your creative eye and your work. Andy is also bringing his expertise directly to a Loft class soon. He has an upcoming class on criticism. See the show notes below for details. Let's jump into our conversation with Andy now. Uh, I'm joined today by Andy. Andy Denart, am I saying that right?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Yep, that's correct. If you're from Wisconsin like my relatives, it's Denert, but uh my Floridian family just pronounce it Denert.

SPEAKER_03 4:59

Awesome. Um well Andy is um a writer and a teacher, uh um and um a longtime uh critic. Um you're vice president of the Television Critics Association, um, and um, you know, have written for multiple different publications, including the LA Times, the Washington Post, Vulture, Playboy, The Daily Beast, and other places. Um, and you also have a memoir in progress. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 5:26

It is correct. And as my uh Love class was saying yesterday, they're like, when can we read it? And I was saying, uh, let me just finish it. Hope please. Yeah, it's like it's so close to being done that I just need to finish it and start querying. But that's really you know, the writer's life is never never quite being finished with some projects.

SPEAKER_03 5:43

Well, actually, uh I'm gonna go off script just to start. So, what can you tell us about the memoir?

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Yeah, it's a hybrid of cultural criticism and uh memoir in that it's about my journey as both a TV critic or somebody who turned themselves into a TV critic, focusing on reality TV and basically writing about and criticizing other people's lives, um, as I'm also trying to figure out my own life and especially find connection and particularly romantic connection. So the arc of the book is I get voted off of Survivor on day on page one by Jeff Probst, uh uh the host, and which is a thing that actually happened, though you'll have to read the book to find out why. And then on the last page, uh my husband's family votes me into their family at our wedding in a little surprise uh tribal council ceremony that they did. So um it's how we get from one to the other. That's the challenge and the fun, hopefully.

SPEAKER_03 6:41

I love it, I love that framework. Um all fans of Survivor will will know all those references. So I think that's uh that'll be a welcome uh book. I'm excited to see it come out in the world. Thanks. Um, so let's talk about criticism in general to kick us off. Um, you've spent several decades practicing it, teaching it. Um for maybe somebody who's never thought about doing it or thought about maybe they didn't think they had a place in it. What why do you uh what draws you to it and what do you think is helpful as a practice in terms of writing criticism?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Yeah, it's interesting to think about, especially because I kind of stumbled backwards into it, which is to say, now looking back at my life, like I was the kid who was always watching TV when I was like four and five, and like that was I loved TV more than I loved the real world, really. And so um my general disposition was someone who always loved to watch and then talk about what I was seeing and figure out, and you know, especially some of the kind of early experiences I had with pop culture. Like my grandparents took me to CET when I was five, and I was terrified because I didn't realize that it was a movie, I thought it was a play, and I didn't know that any of that was but that also led to me having this intense curiosity about how things were created and how um so that said, all that kind of disappeared in the my like you know, childhood and early 20s. I was a terrible writer and in cle in school, uh, and then in high school, I discovered journalism. I love that. It was like writing that had an effect, people could be seeing it, reading it. It could, you know, help people understand the world. I could gather information. There's something new for me to focus on all the time, which my ADHD brain loved. And then um I just basically was doing journalism until it literally, I think it was in uh at an internship when someone was first like, you know, you talk about the real world on MTV all the time. Like, why don't you just write about it? And I was like, I could do that. And and so I started doing that, and I basically was extremely lucky in terms of timing, which was that was right about the time that reality TV went from niche cable, like MTV Real World Rogue Rules was pretty much the only game there was. Um, and of course, other shows in the in the past from an American family in the 70s and on. But that happened right around um the summer of 2000, or 1999, summer of 2000. So I was right there as Survivor, Big Brother, making the band. Other shows came to broadcast TV, and then the success of Survivor kicked off what we know today to be just reality TV being like a solid genre that stands alone or you know, by it can stand next to uh drama, comedy, etc. So, and yeah, I think I think I get as a critic and as I've taught myself criticism essentially, it's like that original thinking of like, what did I just watch? What do I think about it? And you know, if I go to movies with friends, like whether that was in college or now, um, I want to talk about it afterwards, I want to see what people thought. It's like, did were you as disappointed by this as I was? Were you as thrilled by this? Uh, why? What was the parts that we liked? What didn't we? And that's effectively what criticism is of pop culture of the arts, is someone talking about and writing about their experience of art, which honestly isn't that different than other genres, right? As I'm saying that it's writing about our experiences is what we do in creative nonfiction, and other genres, even if like fiction are, you know, even if you're writing fantasy, you're probably drawing from things that interest you that are fascinating about the world and exploring them. And I think of criticism as as similar to that, but obviously we have something that we're responding to. That's maybe the big difference.

SPEAKER_03 10:47

Yeah, and I guess, you know, I think um maybe uh um a common probably misperception or conception of uh criticism is it's really it boils down to like the thumbs up, thumbs down, the star rating, the the um, you know, the the the handy tools that you see uh on the headline or on the you know the whatever. But beyond those sort of like tools that we have this sort of like to sort of numerate our our thinkings about things, what do you think goes into kind of more thoughtful generative criticism?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yeah, I mean, I think you're you're right. The the kind of um like I liked it, I didn't like it, is actually a place to start, the thumbs up, thumbs down. But even like, you know, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel in their conversations would often like really violently disagree with each other, not violently, like actually come to blows, but like it sometimes felt like that. There's some great clips if you want to look them up on YouTube of them just like kind of uh arguing during like a promo filming, and you can kind of feel the tension that sometimes was there. And so we think that like, yeah, we're we might give a simplistic, like, yes, you should see this, no, you shouldn't, I liked it, I didn't. And that's still the case. Like, I just you know reviewed a new food network show this week. Um, and essentially I was like, this is a waste of time. That's what my headline said for us and for somebody else. And I think some people read that headline and then they get mad because they like the show. But my job as a critic is then to explain why I had that reaction. What are what pieces, what what are the layers? Um, and for me, it's really important to look at the craft and the content, which is are both really fascinating. So the content being the actual material, the characters, the storylines, the messages we're getting from it, and then the craft being how that's all assembled. Some shows, you know, or anything, any pieces of art, but like for TV shows, you know, sometimes they have really gorgeous, beautiful cinematic editing, other times it feels super choppy. Um, you can often tell that reality TV shows did a bad job or were like not well thought out until the editing room, when you can hear the editors literally clipping people's sentences apart to create new sentences, and then you never see someone's mouth moving, you always see other footage when they're saying those things, because of course you can't show them saying them. So it's like I will respond to that. I'm like, well, why are we having to make up sentences and editing to like fill in gaps here? Like, what are we what are we missing? So the craft, and and like I can also just appreciate the craft too. Like, there's this brilliant show that was on stars uh years ago called The Chair, which uh no surprise that I, as a writer and critic, also like this because the chair gave the exact same film script to two directors, um, and then they each made a movie out of the same script, and they couldn't change characters' names. They could change some details, but it was basically this idea. And then there's a documentary made about it. And the documentary itself is beautiful, just these the shots of Pittsburgh as they're doing their work in the winter, and just the kind of way it captures the tension and the creative process is just gorgeous to look at. So that's the craft, and then the four, you know, the content being like, how is this director making this decision? Like, why are they being so stupid here? Why are where did this great idea come from? And so um, yeah, I love I love just like kind of peeling back all those layers and and looking at them.

SPEAKER_03 14:20

You know, I think about um people who might want to toy around with this or might want to play around with this. Um and I wonder if this feels um if there's sort of a fear of kind of an imposter syndrome, or sort of like, who am I to call myself a critic? Like how and so what would you say to somebody who's sort of kind of interested in this, maybe want to make take your class, but is sort of feeling like hesitant to like overcome that sort of sense of that barrier of like who who am I? I'm not a critic, who am I to to engage with this kind of this kind of work?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Yeah, I would the first thing I would say is I think we're all critics in the sense that we all do this kind of analysis on a daily basis, even if you don't feel yourself doing it with art in the same way. It's something that I think we're used to. You know, if you go out to dinner or go to someone's house to have food uh and talk about the food, did you like it? Did you not? Uh how did you feel about this is the same thing, like if you know, if a friend breaks up with someone, you might sit around and analyze that uh that ex's behavior. And so you're so people already have experience here. And I think the you know, the imposter syndrome part is probably really helpful in that it's not helpful if it prevents you from starting or trying or taking a class like this or or any others. It's helpful though in that it says, I understand that I have limits. Like if you write about a movie, you know, it's important to know, like if you're not a film historian, maybe you don't want to make a claim that this is the first time in cinematic history that this thing has happened. And so it's it's good to know your own limits. And and again, I'm very lucky in that I kind of grew up as a critic alongside a genre. So I have a lot of history. That's but then there's also like I have friends who are younger than me who know film better than I ever will. They have a vast knowledge, you know, trove of knowledge. And I don't have that even about reality TV, despite its like lower, you know, time period. So, you know, I think the I would ultimately say I hope nothing will ever stop someone from writing or trying a new form of writing just to see what would happen. But yeah, it's like, especially when you're in the nonfiction space, it's good to just understand where you come into this. And where you come into art's criticism can very much be just a, hi, I'm a person who experienced this art and I want to share my experience of the art with you, and that's enough. And that is valuable, it's interesting, it's uh useful. Are all the people who look at that online maybe going to respond in the same way? Like if you film this as a short form video and put it on YouTube or TikTok, you might get some snarky comments. I I still get those. I have talked with my therapist sometimes about how they make me feel because it hurts my feelings. And because it's like I always want to talk about the thing, but it's when someone's like, you just hate this show. And it's like, did you not read the 1500 words I wrote, like about what I didn't like? And so yeah, it's it's the I I guess I guess too, like this isn't for everyone in the in the sense that writing criticism is obviously for a public audience generally. I do think there's uses for it, maybe in your own work, that you might not ever publish it. But if you think about publishing it, it's it's the same thing as doing any kind of publication. But journalism, especially, like you are producing for an audience, and so you're not going to have an audience responding to it. And I also recognize that in the online world and the regular world, like women, people of color get much more disproportionate levels of uh, you know, anger, hatred, etc., responding to their ideas and opinions. So I guess I'm just offering that as the caveat to like always take care of yourself when you're putting your work into the world. Um, but just on the basic question that you asked, it's I think totally normal when trying out a new genre or just thinking, like, yeah, how do I write about this painting or how do I write about this song is you know a good question to ask and then to try it anyway.

SPEAKER_03 18:32

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think anytime you put any kind of reaction out into the world, there's a possibility that somebody's gonna have a different reaction and not agree with your reaction, right? But it doesn't make it, yeah, it makes it even maybe more valuable because that creates sort of conversation, and that's sort of where we all live in these spaces. Um I want to ask, um, uh I want to get to your class in a second, but I kind of want to ask about um you kind of kind of as you described, kind of growing up, or not growing up, but your career growing up with a genre. Um yeah, I'm wondering if that was you know how challenging that was for you to find that space. Um I would imagine, I don't know this to be true, but I would imagine that reality television wasn't, especially in its early days, looked at as a potential even vehicle that deserved critical attention, that it was sort of a a space that probably um that that the a perception that it's not only didn't have didn't have that sort of going for it, but it was it was unscripted. So how could you how could you react to it in any sort of way? So I'm wondering uh how you've seen that change and uh how you how you adapted or worked through that uh over your career.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Yeah, I appreciate that question because it's definitely true. I think reality TV is still kind of the you know um uh like unwanted sibling of television. Sometimes it feels like where people and I often encounter people who say, like, I hate reality TV, and or I don't watch any, and I'm like, okay, and then they'll say, But I love America's Got Talent, or the amazing race that I've never had. And that's like, so you do like some of it, and I think sometimes you know, people assume one type of show, like reality TV equals the real housewives, and that's there's so much more than that, right? But yeah, the early years I think were especially hard for me because I was also writing online, and so that was in media and journalism world, online was still kind of like you are not serious, you're not like there was amazing journalism being produced, like Salon in the early days and the late 90s, and um i freelance for them, and was just so honored to even be in those pages, and so really great stuff, uh, but also still that kind of you know barrier, I guess. And just like to illustrate that barrier, uh, as you mentioned in my bio, which I appreciate, I'm the president of the Television Critics Association now, which represents 220 plus uh journalists, editors, reporters, critics in the US and Canada. I applied three times and was rejected from that in the night in the 2000s. And partly it was just because like we first it was like we don't accept people who write online. And I also did wonder too, and it was also, I think, I wonder if it was because I wrote about a single subject, which was also rare. Now there's people who specialize much more. So I was kind of having to fight both an external perception, but also an internal one, like what am I doing here? Um, and I will say that I had a day job, like I taught at university four years. So I learned and grew up while kind of having a comfortable footing, which I think is the case for many writers, is being able to have something that you know pays the bills while you're while you're writing. And then I also just did a lot. Of writing on my own, on my own website. So I freelanced, I did as much as I could for other people. But when I didn't have those opportunities or I just wanted to write something on a whim, publishing that on my own, I think made a lot of difference because I just did it anyway. And I kept writing. And so I just uh celebrated the 26th anniversary of my website that I started in the summer of 2000. And I know that if you, Chris, and I had talked in July of 2000 or August of 2000, you said, so like you're going to be doing this for the next 26 years, I would have just like shut off the computer and gone to bed. Uh, because that's impossible. But the fact that I've been writing for 26 years has made me a better writer. And if that's true of whatever your genre is, just doing the writing. So as many of those, like, yeah, as many of those kind of obstacles that you described that were there, they definitely slowed me down sometimes. They definitely caused me to have doubt and concerns. And um, but I also just I kept doing it and I just got hopefully better. Like I'll leave that to the critics of my work to judge. 26 years are up there if you want to tell me how bad I still am. Uh, but uh there we go.

SPEAKER_03 23:15

Well, I actually let's let's dive into this idea of um improving our writing, improving writing over time. Um you in your class description uh for for the classes coming up, you write that practicing criticism helps writers in all genres, from you know, novelists to poetists to memoirs, memoirists. Um so why? Why do you think that putting on a critic's hat makes someone maybe a better storyteller or a better practice or practitioner in their creative work?

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Yeah, I think it's the process of analysis that really helps you figure out what you think about something and having to articulate that, I think, gets us to be more specific as writers. Um, and so you are basically saying, um, you know, I like this thing, or I don't like this thing, or here's what I thought about this thing. Um, and having to sort of like break that down and find those specific things can help you with if you're writing a novel, it's like, what do you like about this character? What is the thing that um, you know, other how what are other people responding to? And so you basically are having to do a form of criticism with your own characters where you're thinking about them. And uh the fun of fiction writing, and I say this is a non-fiction writer, is you can of course just make something up and then be like, oh, there it is. It's like, I don't have it in front of me, but I'm gonna add it there, which is amazing. And for those of us in nonfiction, it's helpful to be able to like break that those things down where it's like, this is all I have, is this real material. What do I find here? So finding those details, because I think in every genre across all writing, this specificity is what makes writing come alive. And the more specific you are about your experience, your character's experience, the more audiences relate to it, which it's kind of paradoxical because we would maybe want to say, like, you know, this is universal, everyone loves it. But if the nerdier, the weirder, the more specific you get, the more people say, aha, like I see something in that that uh is familiar to me.

SPEAKER_03 25:22

I like that. Um, so your class, I put the link in the chat. Your class is coming up on September 19th. Um, it's a single session class. Um, can you walk me through what somebody can expect to get out of that the class that you're gonna be teaching?

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Yeah, absolutely. And I it's um going to be like because it's a single session class, obviously we're not we don't have time to kind of build over weeks or do some, you know, do that kind of rating that can change and evolve. But what we will do is really get into what critiquing art is all about and culture. I will give you some tools and techniques that have worked for me to how to break things down, how to look at them from multiple angles, talk about different kinds of criticism and what you just like here's some genres you might want to try out and write in, whether that's in your own newsletter or on your own website, or maybe something becomes part of a larger project you're working on. So kind of looking at all of the components of arts and cultural criticism, and then we'll look at some examples of great pieces, we'll talk about them, have some discussions, and then we will do some actual critique as a group uh with some videos and images that I will select to uh challenge us and also have some fun with it a little bit. Obviously, we we're not gonna watch like a three-hour movie in a four-hour class, but um, watching a short form video or uh looking at a photo um can be interesting as well. So if you're coming, be prepared to write and do some little exercises that possibly could grow and build into something else, even you know, with the artificiality of the exercise. Like I always give exercises that I hope will help writers both practice something and then can kind of change into something else. So um, my goal is to have people walk away with understanding criticism, understanding kind of the the type of writing that you can do, that how expansive it is, and then also just to have some chance to play with it and see if it's something that you like or don't like or could incorporate or uh might maybe you suddenly decide like, oh my gosh, this is what I was always meant to be as a as a critic, and this is what I want to do for the next 26 years. Don't say that to yourself, but you know what?

SPEAKER_03 27:46

Um, I often uh I often ask people uh in these conversations what they've been reading or what they've been uh you know, authors they admire. I'm gonna ask you a slightly different variation. You mentioned um some, you know, reading some work together. Are there are there critics, uh television critics who you um admire, who you look up to, who you think that we should be following, who we think you should be paying attention to in terms of their work?

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Yeah, so I will say um as president of the TV Critics Association, I don't want to necessarily call out one or two of our members as being the only uh, you know, as thing people I might have put you in a bad position there. No, no, that's okay, because they're all all our members are amazing and I'm excited. I will actually um right now just drop into the chat a link to this is on Surf Social, which is a um new website from the uh people who are behind Flipboard. Uh it also links to Blue Sky if you're on Blue Sky, but basically it's a feed of all of our members' work. So there's just a bunch of different examples. I will still answer your question, though, and not avoid it entirely, um, which is to say, like, I love reading other people's criticism. I still do it all the time, especially reality TV, but also other things. I will give a number one major shout out, uh, and just as something to check out is Wesley Morris, who um is now critic at large for the New York Times. And he actually is the person who said that to me uh that you should be writing about the real world because you talk about it so much. And he said that when I was an intern at a small web publication in Boston and he was the culture editor, and I really admired the way he wrote about movies then, he went on to win a Pulitzer for his criticism. So he just like is incredible, and he's especially an incredible storyteller in the way that he is not just doing like a single film or I mean he writes sometimes about a single film or song or whatever the case might be, but especially when he notices a trend and or like a series of things that are happening and the way he weeds his own life, his experiences, his knowledge of all this history together, and just absolutely outstanding. So um I think if you if you haven't ever encountered any criticism or like what this could be, look up Wesley Morris, look up the piece that he won the Pollitur for, uh, and that's a really great place to start. Um, let me think of like other critics who come to me. I mean, there's so many people who I've read, like uh Stephanie Zakarek, who was used to be at Salon years ago and writes about uh mostly film, also TV. I think for the village voice now, wrote about for Salon for a while. Um Manola Dargus at the New York Times has been terrific uh and written some amazing stuff. And yeah, it's I guess it's it's a hard question in the same way that probably you know people struggle. It's like, what's your favorite book or what's your favorite right? Or it's like what time is it? And yeah, yeah. Exactly. Right. And that's actually just one reason to point to the um to the criticism, the puzzles for criticism, not necessarily uh like that, you know. I don't think that people who've won that award are the only people worth reading, but it just shows you the the range of things for from everything from classical music to architecture, like there are architecture critics, uh, theater, of course, television, uh painting, all kinds of different approaches, and then a lot of approaches that combine those things. And, you know, just to be honest about the reality of things, like we're seeing a lot of media organizations, newspapers, uh, magazines laying off their critics because they think that this isn't necessary anymore, that people can just go online and say they like something or don't. But that really misses the point that arts criticism and pop culture criticism are so important just to help us contextualize, understand, and see art in a new way.

SPEAKER_03 31:55

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's that's the piece that feels so that that this is a creative practice and that that that it is like it it takes skill and a craft and an eye. It's not just somebody posting on Facebook that, you know, I just saw this movie and I liked it, right? So it's it it um it has real value. And I think it and like I what I really admire too, like the the kind of criticism that I really admire are just what you spoke to is like pointing out maybe the broader context or the broader trend that might be something that I have just watched, but I didn't realize it had sort of these notes that were sort of echoed elsewhere. And I I that that piece feels it feels like oh, that's really neat. I've I I feel now I'm like I'm in something, I'm part of something, I've been made part of something, and I didn't even realize it until I read that. So I think that that it's a real gift uh when when you find a critic that you really uh uh connect with in that way.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Absolutely. And I think that's you know, I appreciate you saying that. And that's you know, I love reading that, and I hope uh I'm offering a little bit of that to the world sometimes and in my work and hope to help other people find their way into that if if that's uh would interest you as well.

SPEAKER_03 33:11

A big thank you to Andy. Be sure to check out the show notes and sign up for that upcoming class on criticism. I think you'll agree with me that this that there's a lot here, and uh he's a really excellent guide. Um, and I I think this is going to be an excellent class. So I encourage you all to sign up for that if you can. Before we wrap up today's episode, we have an exciting feature event that's coming up, and I want to put it on your radar. We are gearing up for a dynamic weekend with award-winning poet and artist Hume Minwin. There are two distinct ways you can uh jump in and experience work and work with Hugh directly. The first is on the morning of September 12th. Hugh is hosting what we're calling a forge craft seminar titled Little Rooms: Poetics of Inventory and Curation. This intensive workshop will explore how organizing details, objects, and memories can transform the structure of your writing. And this is a really unique opportunity, uh, one we will not probably offer again, just because we have the visiting artist in town. Uh, and Hugh has deep connections in this community, so I really encourage you, if you have the time and space and interest, to come join us that morning. And then that evening, we're continuing the conversations with uh an event we're hosting around Hugh's new book. This event is called The Fire Is Here, Staying Still, and that is Staying Still is the title of Hugh's new book. And this will also include, uh it's a gathering and reading, but it'll also include special guests, Denez Smith and Aurora Masumjaved. So I really encourage everyone to get this on your calendar, get your signed up for these tickets. Uh Hugh is one of those rising star poets uh that you if you're not familiar with his work, you should be. If you are familiar with his work, you should be signing up for this event. Uh so we hope to see you all there. Uh the links below are in the or the links in the description below uh have all the information about those upcoming craft seminar and the event. And as one final reminder, the loft is grateful to the friends of the loft we make who make all of our work, including this podcast, possible. If you haven't joined the loft as a friend, you can do so at loft.org slash join. So that wraps up our debut episode. I hope you'll join us for future ones. Thank you for listening. And make sure you subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. So until next time, we'll see you around the fire.