I have read a few online poetry critiques where the critiquer says right off:

"I don't usually read poems this long, but..."

Should poets be concerned about the length of their poems even if they feel the quality is sustained throughout the duration?

I have read some great poems that were at least four pages long (Mark Doty comes to mind here).

I hate to think that people would be dismissive of work without reading it simply because it looks too long.

Should one avoid writing lengthy poems out of concern that the length will deter the reader from delving into it?

Christin

In a workshop you read differently; it is in many ways work to read in a workshop, because you are on the look-out for errors, things that could improve - and gems that need to be preserved. You don't read in quite the same way when you just read a poem for appreciation. So what people are saying when they state something about the length of your poem is that it seems you have requested a large amount of work from them.

Notice, though, that if the ball gets rolling by someone's first critique which states that he didn't find all too many nits, that allows later workshoppers to make a less thorough read and to just point out occasional errors and to look at the general picture. For my own part, I usually don't read long poems posted in a workshop until I've seen at least one crit of that kind. Part of it is also because I've seen too many N-page poems (mostly other places than the 'Sphere) where the writer clearly has put less work into than an honest poet does writing a sonnet.


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Svein Olav

.. another life

A long poem is a noble but difficult thing. Workshops tend to be hostile because it takes an extraordinary amount of time to critique one well, but don't let that stop you. I would say it is hard in the contempoarary world to imagine a good long poem that is not a narrative, but I suppose it could be possible...

no one has ever complained that a poem is too short.

Well, I have...but maybe I am the first. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

Christin

Dr. Johnson on Paradise Lost: "No man has ever complained that it was too short."

yup, that was what i was trying to remember...

A poem, to me, is not too long if it maintains my interest and everything it says is relevant to it's goal. And the last part's negotiable, as long as it maintains my interest. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

I wouldn't worry about length, just about saying what needs to be said without redundancy or rambling.

Jerry

Voltaire apologized about the length of a letter he wrote: "I'm sorry this is so long. I didn't have time to be brief."

>> Dr. Johnson on Paradise Lost: "No man has ever complained that it was too short." <<

A direct result of the pernicious practice of paying poets by the word. Originally, "Paradise Lost" was a haiku -- one of the earliest in the English language....

Satan, Adam, Eve,
what a hullaballoo! They
made a lot of fuss.

But when Milton was informed he would be paid a mere 12 pence for this monumental effort (@ 1 penny per word), he exclaimed, "Screw that, I'm writing a goddam epic!"

Ideally, poets would be paid to shut up, so that whatever they wrote would be deducted from their pay. The business of poetry would then resemble the business of life as conceptualized by the Greeks: "the only thing better than dying young is never to have been born at all."

But, seriously, the greatest poems in a tradition are always going to be long poems. The modernist preference for short lyrics is, in perspective, a concession to the necessarily fragmentary nature of modern experience. Pieces of an exploded puzzle.

Well, this post is already way too long...... the meter is running!