[Quincy Lehr]

Mike--

I feel your pain to some extent. If a private forum is useful for you and others whom you respect, by all means do it. The technology is there to do it for no cost and little overhead. A Facebook group set to "secret" would do just fine.

I'm not taking the piss here. I haven't workshopped here in ages, and I was sporadic here (and everywhere else) before that, mostly because I wasn't getting as much use out of it. I mean, I know my style and what I'm trying to do, and some people get that and some don't and hey nonny nonny, that's great, because everything is awesome. (And unlike Nemo, I don't see much point in excoriating a work in progress if I object to its concept rather than execution these days. Better to engage the finished product.) But that wasn't the boards, it was me, and in your case, you're an experienced poet with a critical reputation who knows people whose ideas you find useful. Eratosphere might not be the most efficient place for you for those conversations anymore.

[E. Shaun Russell]

Originally Posted by R. Nemo Hill

Personally, I find the giving of critique to be of most value these days, and I though I do not post poems as often as I used to, I remain to critique the poems of others regularly. It is through that openness to the work of others, even work I do not like, that I find the most valuable lessons. Rare moments of communion are worth the wait.

This really resonates with me. I don't write nearly as much poetry as I used to, and as an obvious result, I don't post as many poems for workshopping as I used to either. I know I'll never be a great poet. I have some poems I'm proud of, and enough quality publication credits to avoid the feeling that I'm writing in a vacuum, but there's an essence to the best poetry that I'm not sure that I, at the not-quite-so-young-anymore age of 35, will ever achieve. However, my critical reading skills have improved exponentially over the past few years, and diving into a poem to figure out what makes it tick (and correspondingly, what doesn't) gives me more joy and insight about poetry than writing it ever has.

[Michael Juster]

Shaun:

Don't sell yourself short at 35. I didn't publish my first poem (unless you count the third-grade Arbor Day poem in the local paper) until I was 35, and I wish now that I hadn't published anything until I was 38 or so.

It's too soon for you to know.

Mike

[R. Nemo Hill]

"(And unlike Nemo, I don't see much point in excoriating a work in progress if I object to its concept rather than execution these days. Better to engage the finished product.)"

I don't equate giving critique with excoriation. I don't think of critique as necessarily a negative path into the material, but rather as a discussion of it possibilities, and possible reactions to it.

Yes, Shaun, learning how to read is as valuable and enjoyable as learning how to write. Especially in the case of the former, one's unconsidered opinions often get in the way, and expressing them and subsequently discussing them is a great way to sort them out and see if they are helpful or merely the mote in the eye.

Nemo

[W.F. Lantry]

"Now I am afraid we are doing the literary equivalent of the Ford Administration handing out "Whip Inflation Now" buttons."

Ha! I actually get that joke. What does that say about the two of us? I even remember the buttons.

Here's the real, telling thing though:

"I feel personally abused lately..." And this: "Think of how many great poets have walked away from here."

There's a really, really long list of truly brilliant people who have thrown up their hands and said "you know, it just ain't doing it for me." I remember talking to some of the old mods about this. I was posting every week, and it felt like I was jumping into a shark tank every friday. And their answer was, essentially, 'brutal savagery leads to stronger aesthetics.'

It reminded me of a guy I knew, years ago, who ran a workshop in California. He wanted tough poets, he was an ex-football player, after all, and he acted like a coach who had a bunch of lollygaggers on his team. So I tried to tell them that's not how you get maximum production, and it's certainly not how you get people to take aesthetic risks. After all, who would be foolish enough to extend their arm in a shark tank? It's gonna get bitten off.

We do have a reputation in the wider world, and it's not the reputation we think we have. We think of ourselves as rigorous, insightful, completely, even brutally honest, unwilling to hold anything back in pursuit of pure aesthetics. But others see us as a bunch of snapping turtles. And who wants to go skinny-dipping in a pond of snapping turtles?

Part of me feels a sense of personal responsibility in all this. For a long time, I posted a poem every week. And I shared every publication success I had. But I got attacked for both of those things. So I rarely mention publications here any more. And i haven't posted a poem in a while. I've lost so many fingers in the snapping turtle pond, it makes swimming more difficult...

Best,

Bill

[Julie Steiner]

The following crankiness is no reflection on the excellence of Shaun's moderatorship, and I'm happy to see his active interest.

I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again, but I'd really, really like to see the same level of honest and high-quality critique offered for all metrical poems. And I think the only way to foster that environment is on a single metrical board.

The improved quality of poems and critique on the Met board during TDE's dormancy was a bona fide success story. I wish others would view that period of time as I do: namely, as evidence that a single metrical board would really be best.

Yes, absolutely, negative comment cannot be withheld if poets are to improve. But at various times over the past decade I've seen fratboy-style hazing take over The Deep End, with the excuse that it's an elite board and if people can't handle it, they have no business posting there. This ready-made justification can degenerate into a gratuitous blood sport, and I've seen it drive off new members who have great artistic potential, but lack the masochistic streak necessary to put up with that kind of mistreatment for long. Sadly, too, I have observed--here and elsewhere--that when bullying attitudes are allowed to incubate in the supposedly-isolated Petri dish of an elite (or perceived-as-elite) board, those attitudes tend to infect the other boards as well.

Not that these things would necessarily happen on Shaun's watch. I'm just saying that the inherent inequality of the two boards creates the potential energy for such, and I've seen it turn into kinetic energy time and time again.

Writers' needs change as they develop their craft. What I needed from Eratosphere several years ago is different from what I need now. There's nothing abnormal or unhealthy about the fact that I am not the same person, or poet, now that I was before. In fact, it is abnormal and unhealthy when people don't change over time.

When veteran members sing "Auld Lang Syne" for some Golden Age of Eratosphere, what we're really nostalgic for is the magic of our own periods of most dramatic improvement. We can't bring back that Golden Age by restoring The Deep End, if that's where the magic happened for us. However, we can help to create someone else's Golden Age, by mentoring other poets--whether in a venue called The Deep End or no.

Although I post poems only a handful of times per year, I do try to keep offering critique, both for altruistic and selfish reasons. I always feel I get more benefit out of composing my thoughts for a critique than the poet or bystanders do.

As for posting my own work, I have a triage system:

Category 1: If I can't (or don't want to) be objective about negative comment on a piece (e.g., it's too personal, or I'm already confident that the poem is good), it's counterproductive to post it and have it picked to bloody gobbets, or to waste readers' time stroking my ego with positive comment. This stuff I either keep to myself, or share with a friend or two, before submitting for publication.

Category 2: If I feel that a piece is crappy, there's also no point in having people point out flaws I can already see.

Category 3: So the only poems I workshop are somewhere in between--stuff I feel has tremendous potential, but isn't quite working yet, for reasons I can't identify...or which is crappy, but I'm too close to it to see it yet. Based on reader input, I then either abandon the poem or crank out a rewrite. I rarely post rewrites unless I'm still not entirely happy with them. (Rewrites that I'm sure are successful go into Category 1, however curious the previous commenters may be to see exactly how I've applied their suggestions.)

[Orwn Acra]

The lack of popularity in the Deep End is really just the slow dismantling of the patriarchy that created it. Any talk of a "Golden Age" of Eratosphere can be equated to a nostalgic view of the narrow aesthetic that used to prevail, and though there are maybe many reasons why certain people have left, one of them must be that the old-users no longer liked the new approaches and voices. There used to be no non-met, remember, and the membership was far more academic and stodgily formalist in the past. There have been examples of new members promptly leaving when their outsider voices clashed with the established order. The Deep End's fate echos the current sea change in the outside world--very simply, those who have traditionally held power are losing it to the historically marginalized.

[Quincy Lehr]

Originally Posted by Julie Stoner

When veteran members sing "Auld Lang Syne" for some Golden Age of Eratosphere, what we're really nostalgic for is the magic of our own periods of most dramatic improvement. We can't bring back that Golden Age by restoring The Deep End, if that's where the magic happened for us.

Buh-buh-buh BANG! Julie nailed it.

[Rick Mullin]

Let's close down Metrical too. And just have a site for poetry. That will eliminate any vestigial stodge. No?

Drain the pool!

RM

[R. Nemo Hill]

I couldn't have said it better than Julie & Orwn.
And I agree with Rick, let's mix it all up. Sometimes I think it is only self-interest that keeps met and non-met apart, self interest on the part of those poets who need some fantasy of exclusion to whine about in order to justify their personal choices.

Nemo