Ad-verse Criticism
 

The Devil, they say, makes work for idle hands. I found this in my "spoof" box while looking for something to answer Holly's thread. Anyone else have anything on the "gentle" art of criticism?

Ad-verse Criticism

Higgledy-piggledy
Circumlocutory
Telling its tale in a roundabout way

S1L6, out of 10, gets a nix
I am missing the meaning
You tried to convey

The poem’s debatable
Unpunctuatable
Prosody’s parlous by any parameter

Went for a sonnet
But fell over on it
With what I would christen “spasmodic pentameter”

Please be a formalist
Make your pomes normalest
Get on the “A” list, the playlist at Raintown

Work at the craft
Write vers-libre? Don’t be daft!
Do translation and crit, get a reading gig downtown

Show me, don’t tell
No “confessional”, hell
That’s so passé, and Sylvia did it to death

You may yet be a poet
But this doesn’t show it
The schema, you dreamer
Is in terza rima
And villanelles tell well of last dying breath

Triolets? Yes way!
Or write like Neruda did
Lemons have nipples, or so it would seem

I await your revision
With anticipation

There’s much here to like, though
That last line’s a dream…

I've got a couple but they've been published - do they count?

Why not?

No prizes...

P

OK - here goes then

Against Rhyming

For U.A. Fanthorpe, who found me weeping on
the road to Jericho, having fallen among critics.

“Rhyme gets you noticed”. But it’s just a flier
To get the punters near the proper stuff.
It’s to free verse a poet should aspire;
Rhyming and chiming isn’t strong enough
To carry messages of any weight
And real involvement in the here and now
Demands the rawness of the naked state
Of language. One can just imagine how
Imaginative thought would feel the pinch
Of being squeezed into a villanelle
Whose rigid metre wouldn’t give an inch
When freedom’s feet demanded space to swell.
Who in their right mind would contrive a sonnet
If anything worthwhile depended on it?

Here's one, though not by me. It was a winner in a long ago New Statesman competition and effectively prevented me from reading the good lady's works. I don't know who wrote it. Probably Bill Greenwell will know. It could have been him.

Higgledy-piggledy,
Dorothy Richardson
Wrote a long novel in
Search of her Muse,
Where, though I wouldn’t sound
Uncomplimentary,
Nothing much happens and
Nobody screws.

Concocting excuses
to post sad old crap
engenders abuses
all over the map.

When rhymes are all forced
the kingdom is lost.

I'm sorry. I won't do it again.

I enjoyed your poem, Ann. Post whatever you want and as much as you want here. The more people the merrier. This is not a workshop.

A ditty I once posted at the Gazebo, with advice on how to show, not tell:

Don’t Tell Me the Man in Your Poem Is Happy, Show Me


Show me bluebirds flying from his eyes
and a smile as wide as Wyoming’s sky.
Show that he shakes so hard with laughter
his head flies off and hits the rafters.
Show when he leaps so high with glee
he’ll crash through my computer screen.
Don’t tell me your man will bust a gut,
just show me a man who self-combusts!
.

Dear Ann

I'm not sure I agree with you (if your poetical viewpoint was indeed your own) but that doesn't mean I don't defend your right to say it!

I hope your apology wasn't serious. Why the devil should you apologise?

Publish and let the world go hang!

I think there is a sense, however, in which a great deal more depends on a well-written sonnet than on a wheelbarrow.

Obtainable online (free and gratis) are Sir John Gielgud's readings of the sonnets of WS. Just Google. if you remain unmoved by them I despair.

Bless you

Philip

Go to hell, you obnoxious reviewer
who enjoys putting bards on a skewer!
In the course of your piece
you’ve applauded MacNeice
but disparaged a name that’s much newer.

Duncan

I was apparently feeling quite bitter when I wrote this a few years ago...


Artistry

The world, it seems, has lost its sense of art--
The painters and the poets go unknown
To ply their crafts, neglected and alone,
Translating the impetus of the heart.
The critics still exist to tear apart
Each earnest scrap of artistry they're shown:
They snidely crush the spirit, then bemoan
Our lack of modern Monet or Mozart.
The penchant for creation has become
A lonesome avocation, lost for some,
In favour of the humdrum and mundane;
The inward artist, inward must remain,
To drown in shallowness, and try to numb
The harshness of rejection, and the pain.

Dear Philip - do not despair.

The sonnet I posted was a piece of devil's advocacy. In a way I am delighted that it appeared so convincing but it was actually published in a collection that included many "straight" sonnets. The poet to whom it was dedicated hardly ever used form. When asked for her advice on how to handle negative criticism, she said that my rhyming "got me noticed" and that the more avant-garde critics saw me as fair game. So I fell on my sword with a grin on my face.

Incidentally I wrote an article on The Sonnet for Poetry News at their invitation after I snuck one under the wire in the National Poetry Competition.

So - thank you for your concern, but you don't have to worry. Much.

Here's some of my own sad old crap:

CRITIQUE

I like this very much, but you should cut
everything that follows stanza three,
maybe change the second yet to but,
eliminate that pompous royal we,
then think about the meter. Are you sure
those anapests you favor don’t create
a sort of sing-song bounciness that pure
iambic verse could help you mitigate?

You might just try this as a villanelle,
or better yet, a series of haikus.
Remember, poet: always show, don’t tell.
And there’s a ton of padding here I’d lose.

I’ve seen your other work and thus surmise
this poem will turn out great --once you revise.

Bob,
Fabulous! I love it!
Martin

In S1 I'd like it better if "yet", "but" and "we" were quoted.

Only kidding...

Philip

"Never Mind”

To smooth a rift, no words seem more felicitous
Than these, whose drift sounds golden and solicitous

Yet covers everything from Cheers, my friend!
And Please, don’t trouble more! to, Why pretend

It’s worth more time or effort or pretense
To sift your fill for any trace of sense?

A range, which tells the otherwise inclined,
We have a lode of issues . . . never mined.

Frank

A gorgeous grin of an answer to a question I've never dared to ask. Ten characters of dynamite exploded in eight lines of wicked glee. Oh, thank you.

I forgot that I had written this ages ago:

Comeuppance



I’m in a room with all the critics who dictate our taste—
Interior designers for the mentally infirm.
There’s not much contact with the eye, a tendency to squirm;
the literary critics seem a trifle janus-faced.

One blurts he likes a painting, then he rushes out, disgraced.
The others use their handkerchiefs as though he were a germ.
They shake their heads and titter and conclusively affirm
that planet Earth is just a pile of cosmic household-waste.

Then, Handel, Shakespeare, Leonardo, Molière appear
with Turner, Goethe, Pushkin, Woody Allen—still they come.
A stream of talent fills the room, Sam Johnson at the rear.
The critics superciliously pretend there’s no one here.
Now Dante points towards the door: “Go, hapless human-scum”,
and Robert Burns flies at the last and kicks him on the bum.

I loved Ann's final couplet. (Yes, I'm that cynical).

John Whitworth posted:

> It was a winner in a long ago New Statesman
> competition . . . I don't know who wrote it.
> Probably Bill Greenwell will know. It could have
> been him.

> Higgledy-piggledy,
> Dorothy Richardson
> Wrote a long novel in
> Search of her Muse,
> Where, though I wouldn’t sound
> Uncomplimentary,
> Nothing much happens and
> Nobody screws.

Sorry to rain on the parade, but:

This won? If so, shame on The New Statesman. I'm surprised that no one else on the thread--or at The New Statesman--has pointed out that this is a (botched) plagiarism of a higgledy-piggledy by John Hollander, published in the earliest days of the form, in Jiggery Pokery (ed. Hecht and Hollander, Atheneum, 1966):

The Lower Criticism

Higgledy-piggledy
Dorothy Richardson
Wrote a huge book with her
Delicate muse

Where (though I hate to seem
Uncomplimentary)
Nothing much happens and
Nobody screws.

Naw, it's just me misremembering. Must have read it in Hollander's book. I was quoting from memory, though I don't see it as a botch. Long novel/huge book? And have YOU ever read it? I thought not. Shows the power of poetry. Pity someone didn't write one about Ulysses in time.

I think maybe this one fits the rubric:


Taste

I hunger for the taste of hot, fierce art.
Something Yeatsy, with a gut-kick ending;
Or Donneish, with a batter-my-heart-fierce-start.
The cool taste rules, and no use pretending:
A common recipe involves the blending
Of wry-dry whimsy with refined despair.
Add a sweet dash of wist to the ending
And you feel like you just ate a plateful of air!
Give me a Hopkins-like tongue-searing prayer!
A sour taste of Hope, or dark seasoned Hardy
Meditating life on a cold-stone-stair!
Chili-hot meats from the Devil’s party,
Cellar-cold wines laced with cinnamon spice,
A taste like a Yeats-fierce dawn over ice.