[Janet Kenny]

Maryann, you were on the other page and got left out. Sorry.

It's not a matter of not commenting because a poem is or isn't good, but rather of a critic having enough affinity with a style rather than, but also including, a subject. I'm not saying that anyone here ploughs in mindlessly. Not at all! (Notice that please Janice;-) The idea of working one's way dutifully through all sorts of poems because they are there will do nothing for the poem although it may gradually educate us all as poets, but at tremendous cost to a few poets who were just beginning to find their voice in some unusual way.

It's not destructive to point out the elements in a poem that are ineffective. It's necessary.

With infinite care and self doubt.




Janice, not only were you not charged with having failed to support anything, you didn't come into it at all.

Nemo, thank you!

Michael, of course this isn't a beginner's site.

Dee, yes critics and poets have their style and that's as it should be. I was philosophising, not criticising.

John ;-)

Alan, we know where you live too.

Rose: wthayta?

Roger, right.

Michael And since none of us are Crane or Ginsberg or Hughes or Kipling, we need the help. Who says?