Shakespeare's great contemporary with a tin ear/Fascinating.Can't br Marlowe or Spenser. Or Ben Jnson surely.Must be Donne. You are not alone, Williamb. 'Donne's muse on dromedary trots' says Colerdidge. And he was out of favour till the 20th century. Nobody HAS to like anyone. Tolstoy couldn't get along with Shakespeare, as I say far too often. W.S. Gilbert didn't think much of him either. Keep on coming up with them, Willamb. Your posts are always worth reading.

You get the cigar, John. Yes, though I say it with respect, I can't read Donne at any great length without becoming irritated. I'm willing to blame myself. Maybe I'm just reading him wrong, but if that's the case, why don't I have the same problem with Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare, Drayton, the tricksy Spenser, or even Gavin Douglas?

At another board, many years ago, I was accused of having the tin ear because I dared to write a satirical poem about Donne and my inability to read him comfortably. Everybody and their uncle slammed me. If I can locate said poem, maybe I'll PM it to you. I can't find it in any of my papers or files, so I may have lost it. That other board keeps archives of even very old threads, so there's a chance I may be able to dredge it up over there.

Thank you, sir, I enjoy your posts as well.

Hi Williamb!
I'd like to read that poem too... if you do find it, can you also PM it to me?
Thanks.

William B.,
Maybe your son would enjoy Davenport's Version by John Gery, a book length poem (epic?) set in New Orleans during the Civil War. It's in trochaic pentameter, a bold experiment.

http://www.portalspress.com/Author_Bk/Davenport.html

See separate thread, "Hidden Treasure."

Graham, sorry to say I have failed to find that poem of mine, though there's a chance it is still in the archives at PFFA, where I posted it, probably more than ten years ago. My username there was Urizen.

Bill, thanks for the mention of my blog and for the link to the Gery work. My son will probably be interested. It was he who alerted me to the horrors that occurred at the Andersonville prison camp, of which I was ignorant.

Bill

A crit on a poetry forum is fundamentally different from all other types of crit, except those before net forums where poets may have met in a society or informal group. Poems on a forum are by defintion appearing for the first time, they may or may not be 'finished' in the poet's eyes but in terms of the forum they are a work-in-progress, crits presuppose this and offer suggestions , even edit the poem or rewrite it.
Critics who review finished works like films, novels etc are telling people whether they should or should'nt see/read the product. Even textbooks of criticism are writing about finished published products, usually to help students evaluate the work. Whether such reviews employ techniques of literary analysis is not the point, the work is not going to be rewritten, reworked.
I often think comments on poetry forums mix up these two different purposes of critique. Of course many comments simply give an opinion and then the poet has to decide if that opinion is valid. The most useful critique from the author's point of view is, I think, literary analysis, giving reasoned judgements with close attention to the text. This is hard work, it is essentially teaching.