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
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