[Norman Ball]

"Beautiful metaphors, in this case? Lovely scansion? High levels of skill? What could be more inappropriate?"

Boy, you're saying a mouthful here, Bill. I believe it also applies to the other end of the skill curve. Bad poets are people too, or dang it they should be.

I come across poems up here and elsewhere from time to time that are impossibly painful and almost certainly personal. Yes of course, it's a workshop but in those instances a greater reticence seems the appropriate human response. I find myself taking greater pains to address the N as opposed to the poet him or herself, simply out of respect for their perceived hurt and in order to sustain what I suspect is their mirage of 'anonymity'. I often wonder too what exactly they seek with such posts. Critique? A sympathetic audience? Maybe they don't know themselves.

Many, many years ago on this forum a poem appeared from a first-and-only writer. It read to me like an abysmally written cry for help. The usual snarks of that era (there are snarks in every era) went to work with malicious glee. Yet, they had to see the poem for what it was first and foremost, which was not a badly rendered aethetic object (it was that) but a desperate, human reaching-out. Who knows, maybe in his or her depleted condition, the poster had not properly studied the guidelines. As some are quick to remind the occasional stray wanderer, this is no place for amateurs. I mean, can't you read, dumb ass!? Perhaps there should be a warning to the clinically despondent as well.

Anyway I often wondered what happened to that person.

Basic humanity and poetry? Should they mix or is the latter best kept in an arid container?