[Julie Steiner]

I looked up "Aftershocks," which was in the 2003 Sonnet Bake-off (not workshopped).

And lo and behold, in the thread announcing it as one of the winners, several people took the opportunity to lament that the response had fallen off significantly from the previous year's Bake-off.

Even in the Golden Age, people were longing for how much better things used to be. (Not that they didn't make good points.)

It seems more productive to focus on making the most out of the present realities. One such reality is that I seem to be getting grumpier (which is sometimes unhelpful and unwelcoming and I'll try to keep that under control better than I did in a recent critique); but I think that my grumpiness has positive qualities, too. I'm more likely now than in 2003 to say I don't like something, and I doubt that my previous silence helped many people to become better poets.

[Matt Q]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

My real problem with Bill's comment isn't the royal we, which is only slightly annoying, but the fact that it seems to have nothing to do with the Maryann's comment that he quotes and purports to be responding to. All Maryann said was that she can't recall any poem that Alicia posted here for critique. To which Bill mysteriously says, "After a while we talk ourselves into believing our good memories." Huh?

Roger,

Maryann was responding to Michael's comment that A.E. Stallings "almost certainly" posted her own poems for critique, and in that context, Bill is making the point that we tend to inflate our memories of the good old days. Or that's how I read it. It made sense to me.

best,

Matt

[Ed Shacklee]

Indeed, Alicia Stallings did post many poems back in the day -- it's just that we hardly noticed since we were busy stuffing the golden apples of youth in our knapsacks as we rode through the abundant orchards on dinosaurs; all of it, all of it made possible by the fact that we were incredibly, gloriously cranky.

Best,

Ed

[Andrew Frisardi]

Originally Posted by Matt Q

Roger,

Maryann was responding to Michael's comment that A.E. Stallings "almost certainly" posted her own poems for critique, and in that context, Bill is making the point that we tend to inflate our memories of the good old days. Or that's how I read it. It made sense to me.

best,

Matt

Well then, I really don't get what Bill said. I thought it had something to do with being like Hesiod and Ovid, back in the golden days when they were Sphereans.

[ross hamilton hill]

Just in reply to Jayne and Shaun, with my comment that mods should be 'more vigilant' I meant the guidelines should be properly enforced, not that mods need to spend more time being mods but one implies the other so I suppose this is an impossible ask.

re Holly, in Michael Cantor's defence, he did PM Holly before he mentioned it in a comment that Holly rarely if ever gave substantive crits. Holly ignored (by his own admission) Michael's PM.

Perhaps we could lighten the mods load by making General Talk rule free (now that would be interesting) General Talk has produced voluminous threads, maybe not lately but certainly in the 2 or 3 years I've been here.
In General Talk no individual's work is being commented on so it seems to me it does not require the same rules as Met, non-Met.

Also I have noticed many new members since I arrived and I don't think their poetry or comments are any less 'worthy'.

I would like to see more sound recordings and visual readings of poems on the Sphere, we have this technology now and I always enjoy actually seeing and hearing people recite their poems rather than simply reading them.
It's a bit cumbersome; to put a video on the Sphere you need to upload it first to YouTube, but I would migrate immediately to a poetry forum that made this easier as I am a terrible show off.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Ed Shacklee

we were incredibly, gloriously cranky.

Ed,

Some things never change. We seem to be just as cranky as we've always been. My phrasing's still awkward, people still misread, Cantor's making open Ad Hom attacks, again. All of this stuff has been going on for years. I have the impression there's no cure.

Just for clarity: I only meant to agree with another member's assertion that a certain poet was reputed to have *not* workshopped poems here. It's a pretty minor point. Maybe I'm dense - scratch that, I'm really pretty dense - but I don't see what the big deal is. Someone will certainly explain it to me. When they do, I hope they're patient. I'm slow on the uptake. Proof: I always thought the 'royal we' required a capital W. But then, what the heck do I know?

Best,

Bill

[Charlotte Innes]

Just to say... I am enormously grateful to the Sphere for what it has given me over the years. I do feel my poetry has improved in certain craft-related ways because of the incredibly demanding critiques here.

I also think there are lulls in Sphere participation--although I'm struck by all the good poets taking part in this discussion! However, I do believe the quality and energy of poems posted goes up and down. (Drills and Amusements is the exception. Always brilliant!)

I have been off Sphere for a while largely because of demands in my "other" life. I think David Rosenthal put it well a few posts back. And yes, as Rick said, being on Sphere is "exhausting." I used to spend huge amounts of time critiquing. Posting a poem also takes energy, since one needs to respond thoughtfully to comments made by others, and so on. I also haven't written that much poetry lately.... well, it's just one of those times... And I agree that Facebook has eaten into Sphere-time.

One last comment. Editors DO scour the web when good poems come in, and they are very strict about rejecting poems that appear there in any form. That said, my Rattle poem was workshopped here originally, but I'm sure that by the time Tim Green accepted it, it had been cleaned off the Sphere, since that's the system. And it's a good system. However, if your poem has been caught by Google, it does stay there for a good few months.

BUT I also discovered that if you give the poem another title on the thread page--I mean, different from the title that appears with the poem, it's very unlikely that your poem will appear in any form on Google. I started doing that regularly a few years ago, and it worked! (I'd be curious to know if that didn't work for anyone.)

Charlotte

[Michael Cantor]

Bill - what was an "open ad Hom" attack? I quoted a statement you've made many times. And Kate has published articles describing how she deals handles your submissions, (and deals with publishers, and changes in the poem they suggest). If I looked it all up and put it in quotes, would that make it less ad hom? And I disagree with both that approach to poetry, and with your approach to criticism, which basically appears to avoid saying anything negative (that's an opinion, but not ad hom). I feel that it's the kind of thing that weakens the Sphere and takes it away from a focus on writing the best possible poetry and turns in into more of a Poetry Appreciation Society - and this is a thread about the Sphere - and you made a statement that I very much disagree with - so I said something.

[Charlie Southerland]

As much as it pains me to agree with the Sheriff, I do.

[Douglas G. Brown]

We learn more from negative crits. than from undiluted praise. This does not mean that all suggestions will improve a poem, but many do.

I've learned a great deal from reading the poems of others, and following the crits. It's like attending a class or seminar, but doing it from the comfort of one's own home or workplace. Plus, there's a lot of entertainment value in reading the various points of view.

Someone once said that the present age is never the golden age, and someone else said that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The actual situation is somewhere between these two extremes.

I'm perfectly happy with the Sphere as it is now. Humans (and their artifacts) are not perfect, but things here are pretty good overall.