I had a much longer response that I accidentally deleted, but the gist of it was this: while there are rules and guidelines at Eratosphere, it's worth remembering that this place is inherently amorphous: different years will have different active members who have different critique styles etc. There's no legitimate way to homogenize this, nor should there be. Some members have left quietly, others have been "run off," while some amateur poets have become great poets, and some great poets have had individual poems derided...all because Eratosphere is the place that it is. In other words, many over the years have tried to change the culture of this forum (I may or may not have been one of them at some point), but that has never happened, and after nearly fifteen years in existence, I think it's safe to say that that never will happen. Nor should it. The core philosophy is that a poet can post a poem for critique, and a critic can say almost whatever he or she wants to about that poem, so long as it doesn't descend into ad hominem. Sometimes this means harshness, sometimes this means saccharine praise, but it is invariably incumbent upon the poet to either take or leave the criticism. It's good manners to "accept" a crit, or acknowledge the time everyone has taken to read and comment on the poem, but it's definitely not a "rule" per se.
Incidentally, I fail to see the "too many cooks" notion as being a bad thing. Poetry is inherently subjective, as are opinions on poetry. As a poet -- and this is true of any workshop -- you just have to decide which comments resonate with you and which don't. It remains your poem either way. Like Roger, I've posted poems for critique, had critique given, then decided not to use any of it. At no point did I not appreciate the time and effort taken by everyone to give that critique...it's just that sometimes it just doesn't mesh with your own personal vision of the poem. And sometimes you need dozens of voices to tell you different things before you're able to distill the essence of what needs to be fixed. A great example is Martin's poem up in TDE right now -- it has undergone a ton of changes since it was first posted, and might undergo more still...but at the end of the day, it has always been up to Martin to decide which to incorporate, and which to politely ignore.
All of this is just a long, roundabout way of saying that these things work themselves out, irrespective of the rules and guidelines. It's worked that way for fifteen years, and will probably keep doing so until Alex pulls the plug.
|