Tim,
I tend to allow more room for the idea of alien aesthetics when I'm reading established poets, while keeping in mind a particular social milieu within which (or against which) they wrote—if I can determine that milieu, their place within the scheme of things. I may not like what they've done, or may only sometimes like it. I did not intend my categorization of my reactions to include the more commonly recognized features such as rhyme, however, but only in response to the areas Clive has addressed. One case of rhetorical patterning handled purposely by an established poet can be appreciated or panned by different readers, on an aesthetic basis at least: Walt Whitman's lists, which some adore and others find to be extremely tedious. I do think that "the Masters" can be so called because they've mastered techniques, even if we don't particularly enjoy their style of mastering. Any discussion of Masters should include a thorough examination of what, exactly, each has mastered, especially also because some have apparently mastered only a few techniques while others seem to be masters of many. (It would be interesting to forego discussion of mastery of meter and rhyme when comparing Formalist masters in order to come to a better understanding of where they differ in other areas—or at least to separate discussions of differences in handling meter & rhyme from discussions of differences in handling the five areas Clive has addressed.)
I think we can agree that most of us, who participate in these online workshops, are not masters of many things with regards to poetry. I am not very amenable to the extreme subjectivist theory that differences in reaction can always be dismissed on the basis of alien aesthetics, simply because such a dismissal obliterates any potential negative criticism on any other basis. In the first place, unless I'm familiar with a participant's work, I have little reason to believe that she must have intended certain effects vis-a-vis Clive's Five Issues; and in the second, even an awareness of a participant's general work does not eliminate the potential for a given poem to be read differently by members of a general readership who do know her oeuvre. Which is not to say that I am always 100% confident that my own analysis of a poem's inner workings is unassailable; here's an example of my dilemma:
For years now I've railed against the peculiar use of the words "bone" and "ash" in poems posted at various workshop sites. When those words refer to the actual substances, bones and ashes, I have less trouble; but often they're used by poets figuratively to signify mortality, transience, or decay, quite outside any attempt at an extended metaphor which would utilize the actual substances. The Romantic poets had roses and "the stars;" many contemporary poets have "bone" and "ash." (I think that the latter are also romantics, but current romantic notions often circle the ideas of relativity and subjectivism.) So a poet might introduce the line, My thoughts were bone; my love was ash into a poem which does not otherwise deal in concretes related to bones, ashes, or which does not have a larger scheme which utilizes such figurative speech. In responding to the poem, I might point out that the line seems like an abrupt, overly self-conscious attempt at sentimentality, but another critic might say to the poet, "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean!" I call those two words, in such a use, "trigger words" which are meant to signify far more than is actually present or suggested elsewhere in a poem. I tend to dislike such uses, but I can't help acknowledging that a certain social milieu—whether the online workshop alone or a larger potential readership which enjoys sentimentalism and/or sensationalism—might enjoy the overture. Such uses are often cited as good examples of using the concrete in poems, but from my perspective they are abstractions since the actual substances toward which they point are nowhere present or intended to be relevant.
While I must acknowledge the possibility that odd uses or odd juxtapositions of elements might be taken for granted by some readers who come to expect that sort of thing, I often feel the need to point out that other readers might scratch their heads or that the poem, as a whole, seems, from my perspective, to point elsewhere and that those juxtapositions detract from the overall experience, are diversionary.
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