[Richard Wakefield]

In my earlier question about whether and how much a writer's biography matters in our appreciation of his or her work, I was approaching a broader matter that gets talked about in bits and pieces: In evaluating any art, but poetry in particular, how much can we separate "form" from "content," and how much of the content can we declare extraneous to our esthetic judgments? Example: a poem with a political slant that we find disagreeable but that is well crafted and inventive. It's tough to ignore the extra-poetical stuff, especially when, for me, at least, part of what makes a poem effective is an inextricable melding of form and content.
So, while as readers of course we choose whatever pleases us for whatever reasons, are we obliged as critics or teachers to leave aside our objections to what a poem says?
Richard

[Robert J. Clawson]

I think a good teacher would set aside the objections and discuss, objectively, the artfulness of the poem. There's nothing wrong, then, with saying, "This is a beautifully crafted poem, and it almost persuades me to re-examine my beliefs."

Bob

[Richard Wakefield]

Bob:
I agree, at least in principle. It's easier said than done. But someone said -- Eliot? -- that at its best a religious poem tells us not what to believe but how it feels to believe, and that seems to me a pretty good test for any poem. If it gets me a little closer to the visceral experience of someone who seems otherwise quite different or distant from me, it's a mighty fine poem.
RPW

[Robert J. Clawson]

Yes.

[RCL]

Yes, yes. Take Hopkins. Though I'm not a believer, his dazzle never dims and I viscerally respond to most of his work--his struggles and epiphanies.

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Ralph

[Carol Taylor]

I agree in principal, too. And if a poem is so perfectly executed that I admire its delivery even though I hate what it says, I will usually acknowledge the skill of the writer. But if a poem I find highly offensive needs work, let the writer find another critic to help him offend more effectively. In practice, a poem is the marriage of content and form, so how can the poem be better than its content? And "better" will always be a subjective term.

Carol

[Richard Wakefield]

I had a teacher once who claimed that the three questions to ask of any work are (1) what is this artist trying to do, (2) how well is he or she doing it, and (3) is it worth doing. In practice, though, it's hard to get past "what" and "how well": those questions open out into the history of literature and the entire world of human experience. They also imply a critic's claim to omniscience, a claim that I think is unsupportable in most cases and is certainly unsupportable in mine. So, like you, Carol, I'm thrown back on the subjective. I tend to ask myself (1) does this work reduce the distance between me and the writer, and (2) from what I discern from the work itself, is this a writer I want to get closer to. I'd like to be a good enough person to say that nothing human is alien to me, but it ain't so.
RPW

[Kate Benedict]

A propos -- in my early days here at Erato, I was frankly floored by some of the critiques in Metrical, long threads which hammered away at a given poem's craft but virtually ignored its content.

I don't separate form and function in poetry myself. A poem is only as good as its ideas. Examples of weak ideas would be silly pathetic fallacies, saccharine romanticism, the proselytizing of religious or political doctrines, a reliance on cliche, a defendedness against deep emotion if the topic is inherently charged emotionally, or simply ideas that don't go deep enough, that accept the status quo. Indeed, amateurish poems often don't even have ideas. "I took a drive today; the weather was nice." "I'm in love now, wow."

Ralph mentioned Hopkins, a great example of a poet who can be appreciated even if one is not religious. Why? Even athetists need to praise, and his songs of praise give voice to that impulse. His angst and doubt spare the poems from pious treacle. Still, I remember a Jewish college student who simply could not relate to his work at all. Is that a failure of the reader or an inherent weakness in the work, which is, after all, Christian to the bone, and therefore limited in its appeal? Also, last year, in a Hopkins thread in MOM, Alan rightly pointed out that Hopkin's self-loathing is also problemmatic. Hopkins fairly wallowed in self-loathing; he didn't question its source. A hatred of sex and the flesh was built-in to his austere brand of faith. He wasn't thinking; it was a failure, once again, of idea, a total acceptance of a particular status quo. No?

[A. E. Stallings]

Much of this discussion brings to mind passages from Housman's splendid essay "The Name and Nature of Poetry." As this sentence, for instance:

"Good religious poetry, whether in Keble or Dante or Job, is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminatingly relished by the undevout."

[Alan Sullivan]

In defense of long technical discussions on the crit boards: I feel more comfortable telling people how to write than how to think.

Of course, this may be an extraneous topic...