Haha. Nice one, David! :D

I have a feeling it's a character trait. One can always find people who say "The world is going to hell in a wheelbarrow." Or, "Things suck now, but we used to live in a golden age." I always think of Ovid: Iron, before that, Bronze, before that, Silver, and it all started with Gold. But before him, there was Hesiod: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroic, Iron.

Jerome actually put dates on the four ages, a pretty amusing endeavor, given the historical resources he had at hand out there in the desert. Sure, there was the end of the Middle Kingdom in 1674 BCE, and yes, the Minoan eruption happened around 1628 BCE. That's a decent transition from Gold to Silver to Bronze. But what the heck happened in 1472 BCE, to usher in the next age? A lunar eclipse?

People have been getting ink out of this stuff for a while. Two years from now, someone will start a thread that says "It was nice a couple years ago, but things really suck now."

Of course, by then, the photon cloud will hit, and we'll all be toast... ;)

Best,

Bill

Fair enough, David & Jayne & Bill, I say uncle. I do kind of like sharing a character trait with Ovid and Hesiod, though. And even Jerome, in his golden prime. :D

David, that's exactly what I keep telling myself about myself.

As I was telling me friend White Rhino just the other day, the world isn't going to hell in any handbasket. All that nonsense about the good old days with more trees and biomes and such. Why, there is a nice park just outside my office. Someone's always crying about change. Ain't that right, Rhino? Rhino?


Location, location, location. Just a pan-species perspective on world. No charge.

Now the threads of workshops have been purged from the past but archives here to indicate a more vibrant and populated level of thought and discussion. The posts about poetics or what-have-you are longer and less cynical,and there seem to be way more active members alert and awake. I suspect it was just new and exciting to folks back then. There is the Ovid effect. There is also the frog in the boiling water effect.

It is still a very fun place, but more new folks would help the dna. Fact.

Law is the wisdom of the old,
The impotent grandfathers shrilly scold;
The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,
Law is the senses of the young. . . .

And always the loud angry crowd
Very angry and very loud
Law is We,
And always the soft idiot softly Me.

- W.H. Auden, "Law Like Love"

Go ahead, call me Chicken Little, but I think the decline is palpable.

Nemo

Rick Mullin said it: "The Sphere is exhausting."

And it can be. The recent paucity of poems suffers further from lengthy diatribes, recriminations, clarifications, re-recriminations. Maybe there is a seasonality factor. Let's see.

I'm sure most of the older hands have a couple of buds who can offer valued suggestions via email without all the fuss. Sadly they can replicate the best of the forum experience. I happen to like the strange new voices that creep across from time to time.

Another possible problem? The seniors graduate. The freshman class lacks the skills to be let on campus.

If I'm asked to decide whether the Sphere is something less now than what it once was, I tend to remember this thread.

I'll leave you to compare it with what goes on now and reach your own conclusions.

The thing that I found hideously fascinating was the search term "good" that surfaced in strange ways throughout. First like the occasional bubble and then like the beginnings of a seethe.

To quote from one of the posts: "A lot of interesting poems--some marvelous, some godawful."

Ah, subjectivity! as no art is, Faithful and disappointing!

plus ça change...

Since the thread was about "good" poems, and it's a common word under any circumstances, but particularly when appraising and evaluating, and it has several meanings, I guess the word would appear a a good (see?) many times.

She's not on that thread, but the discussion reminded me that if you go back ten years or so, Alicia Stallings was a regular contributor (I believe she was also a mod), and (I'm almost certain) putting up her own poems for critique. She had over 3000 posts, so clearly was active.

Michael's point about Alicia brings to mind how many regular contributors... aren't here anymore, which Maryann's thread emphasizes. Another elephant in the room on the sharing of poems on the interwebs would be, well, social media, where both "seven poems in seven days"-type challenges and long, drawn-out pile-ons about the political issues of the day occur. If there are fewer threads of sustained erudition, likewise, General Talk is less contentious than it once was. Does this result in less energy over here? Yeah. I'm more likely to see the link to your latest publication on Facebook, or even the announcement of latest releases from Able Muse Press (though I'm also on the email list). At the same time, though, the energy isn't gone--it's just more diffuse.

I believe you're mistaken about putting up any of her own poems, Michael. I can't remember even one. But she was a mod for some time, and she did critique generously and often, and she started many interesting discussion threads on the masters and the craft. Those used to attract more participation than current efforts do, and I'm not sure why.

I'm not sure Alicia posted poems for critique, but I remember she entered a sonnet bakeoff at least once -- with her then-new sonnet about bats. And she certainly offered critiques on other people's poems, as did Rhina Espaillat and Robert Mezey and David Mason, to name just a few "stars" who seem to have exited our firmament.

Maryann - one that sticks in my mind as an Alicia workshop poem is Aftershocks, the first poem in her collection Hapax , but I'll admit that I may have heard it read somewhere, rather than workshopped. I can't be certain. But if the 3000 plus posts does not include even workshopping her own poems, it's an even stronger indication of what a powerful force the Sphere was with poets like Alicia that active.

Exactly. We remember, fondly, good times, and our memories fail us. After a while we talk ourselves into believing our good memories.

And we forget the bad ones. As with broken bones, months or years later. We don't recall the sharp pain, the feeling of vulnerability. We just have a vague memory of it being difficult. I remember I couldn't pick up the christmas tree with my broken arm, but I don't remember the exact feeling that made me curse when I tried.

Best,

Bill

Enough with the royal "we", Bill.
I am not being mistily nostalgic. I remember clearly.

Nemo

I've noticed a LOT more announcements about good poets dying than about good poets being born.

What Nemo said, Bill. It was a time when, not only did we attract outstanding poets, but we actually worked our poetry - we didn't brag about getting bored with it the minute the first draft it was finished, and giving it to our wife to polish and submit. And we didn't think there was anything wrong in telling people we didn't like their poem - as a matter of fact, that's why most of us were at the Sphere - for tough feedback and improvement. It isn't just nostalgia - it was a more demanding environment.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Personally, I am not really all that concerned with the stern criticism vs. poetic pandering battle. That doesn't really have that much to do with the Sphere's decline in my view. What I see is that the place has lost its foundational backbone, its spine. And as a result it has lost its tradition/character.

I confess that in the old days when 'newbies' got the condescending third degree and were often subjected to what could seem at times a closed-minded set of standards, I was often one who ran to their defense and argued that the Sphere was far too set in its ways and needed the revitalization of voices that did not necessarily play by the same poetic rules as those long-established on the Sphere. These days, however, the situation has too dramatically reversed itself. So many of the established voices on the various boards have vanished (or are in such a state of hibernation) that there is no dominant aesthetic to the place, no set of standards. And so there is no question of initiation for new arrivals—with the result that each time a few new admirably eager members arrive, it is they that utterly dominate the Sphere for a short length of time. In the old days the strategy of the fresh member was most often (due to the strength of the established core membership) to dip a toe into the water and to study what was in progress, in order to slowly integrate one's voice into a conversation that was already going on. But too often these days there is no conversation already going on; and so the place has become that swiftly shifting cacophony of voices typical of the superficial over-connectedness of an internet chat room. What is missing is the ground of the conversation, the collective memory of the place. It's there, of course, but it plays too small an active role (and then often only as the sniping between old-timers who come out of retirement to deliver their barbs and then vanish again). And so the overall tone of discourse seems to veer wildly according to who has newly stumbled onto the Sphere: without the shared basis, the intimate objectivity that was always the Sphere's special charm, critique comes to feel like no more than a random barking of opinions in a room full of strangers. Critique always runs that danger of elevating personal opinion to doctrine, but the former organization of the Sphere seemed at least to minimize it to a sufficient degree so that many found criticism a useful tool despite what might be argued as its ultimate failings as a true measure of art. I think perhaps former members understood those pitfalls of criticism, and so the work they brought to the Sphere was born far from the vagaries of critique, forged in the personal crucible beforehand, and then brought forth for a last trial by communal fire. I rarely see that particular quality in posted work anymore: finished work ready for the kiln.

I don't really know that a solution can be found, much less implemented artificially, as the process of building a collective foundation, a community, is an organic one, not a mechanical one.

And there is always the distinct possibility that I am just a griping old crank who dislikes most poetry and should retire to the hermitage once and for all and wait for visionary access to something other than words on a page.

Nemo

An astute analysis, Nemo.

Richard

Yes, I agree with Nemo. Dammit. I didn't want to.

(Not the "I am just a griping old crank" bit. The earlier part. :) )

Very well analyzed and expressed, Nemo. I was particularly struck by:

I retract most of the sentiment of my previous posts in this thread.

Nemo wins with: But too often these days there is no conversation already going on; and so the place has become that swiftly shifting cacophony of voices typical of the superficial over-connectedness of an internet chat room. What is missing is the ground of the conversation, the collective memory of the place. And this: I rarely see that particular quality in posted work anymore: finished work ready for the kiln.

Julie gets an assist with: I agree with Nemo. Dammit. I didn't want to.

Which isn't to say I am averse to agreeing with Nemo in general, I just didn't want to agree with him about this. I still stand by the comments about how long people around here have been announcing the decline of the Sphere but Nemo's description rings true for me, which probably means it has been developing this way for a while since I haven't been around for a while.

David R.

Charlotte said: Re the 1st sentence: Yes, that's true, but it's no more than you'd expect.
Re the 2nd sentence: Yes, that's very true! D & A is a fun place. We all get on well with one another and there's never any unpleasantness like ad hom remarks.

I'm finding some of this very negative (as an incurable optimist I would, wouldn't I?). I suppose a lot depends on what individuals actually want from a forum such as this.

It satisfies my needs: I communicate with lots of great people, many of whom I've now met and can truly call friends rather than acquaintances, I enter and occasionally win competitions that are posted here, I read a lot of good poetry and take part in discussions, often find myself laughing out loud... to name a few aspects of being here, all of which are positive.

Well, that's my take on it. I can't say anything about how it all was years ago, before I became a member.
Does it really matter how it used to be? Let's enjoy what we have now. I regret some of the things I've done in my life (who doesn't?) but harking back to the past is a pointless exercise.

Jayne

Hear, hear. I'm grateful that people on this thread have pointed this out. It makes sense. There really is a lot of good here still.

But for me the attempt to express something of what has been lost isn't negative. Not in a negative sense. Sometimes the best way to see what something is is to see what it's not. Nemo wins the positive negative award in this thread. It's the old Apophatic Blues: sing it, maestro.

Does that mean I win the positive positive award, then, Andrew? ;)

You've got it, Jayne, consider it bestowed. Negative negative is another story, and I don't want to go there. Not until next time there's a State of the Sphere thread anyway. ;)

I've dipped in and out of this discussion, so forgive my lapse of memory, but was there something earlier on about attempting to revive the elite element by making the Deep End a password-protected, invitation-only sort of place? I was wondering if some of the old guard might be tempted back by being invited to be official Poet in Residence for a month on such a board. That might stimulate the rest of us to up our game a bit. (I say 'us' -- I'm perfectly prepared for the idea I might not make the cut). And some of them might look in from time to time after the month expired if it had been a positive experience. I never knew the Sphere in the old days, but it seems like this is the element people feel is missing.