I've been in some workshops where my poems were ridiculed and attacked. Occasionally that has happened on Eratosphere. But I find it does not happen here a lot--though it's happened enough that I don't post poems here very often anymore.
"Negative" criticism can be constructive. If I know a person is making a observation about an inadequacy in a poem with the aim to help me make it a better poem, okay. That's different from someone attacking me personally--saying my poem is stupid and that proves I am too; or resorting to sarcasm to try to make a point.
Amis seems to be suggesting that a writer is a genius and writing cannot be learned. I've heard people at the school where I once taught say of writing, "Either you have it you don't. It can't be learned." The idea is a neo-romantic idea that the poet is "possessed with more than common sensibility" (Wordsworth), is simply a cut above everyone else, and the plebians had better not even try.
Maryann qualified Amis' statement well and gave it a context. That modifies it a bit. But, of course, Lucky Jim is about the only thing Amis wrote that's worth reading and he went on the reputation of that book for most of his career. Maybe he should have gone to a workshop.
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