[R. Nemo Hill]

Personally, I am not really all that concerned with the stern criticism vs. poetic pandering battle. That doesn't really have that much to do with the Sphere's decline in my view. What I see is that the place has lost its foundational backbone, its spine. And as a result it has lost its tradition/character.

I confess that in the old days when 'newbies' got the condescending third degree and were often subjected to what could seem at times a closed-minded set of standards, I was often one who ran to their defense and argued that the Sphere was far too set in its ways and needed the revitalization of voices that did not necessarily play by the same poetic rules as those long-established on the Sphere. These days, however, the situation has too dramatically reversed itself. So many of the established voices on the various boards have vanished (or are in such a state of hibernation) that there is no dominant aesthetic to the place, no set of standards. And so there is no question of initiation for new arrivals—with the result that each time a few new admirably eager members arrive, it is they that utterly dominate the Sphere for a short length of time. In the old days the strategy of the fresh member was most often (due to the strength of the established core membership) to dip a toe into the water and to study what was in progress, in order to slowly integrate one's voice into a conversation that was already going on. But too often these days there is no conversation already going on; and so the place has become that swiftly shifting cacophony of voices typical of the superficial over-connectedness of an internet chat room. What is missing is the ground of the conversation, the collective memory of the place. It's there, of course, but it plays too small an active role (and then often only as the sniping between old-timers who come out of retirement to deliver their barbs and then vanish again). And so the overall tone of discourse seems to veer wildly according to who has newly stumbled onto the Sphere: without the shared basis, the intimate objectivity that was always the Sphere's special charm, critique comes to feel like no more than a random barking of opinions in a room full of strangers. Critique always runs that danger of elevating personal opinion to doctrine, but the former organization of the Sphere seemed at least to minimize it to a sufficient degree so that many found criticism a useful tool despite what might be argued as its ultimate failings as a true measure of art. I think perhaps former members understood those pitfalls of criticism, and so the work they brought to the Sphere was born far from the vagaries of critique, forged in the personal crucible beforehand, and then brought forth for a last trial by communal fire. I rarely see that particular quality in posted work anymore: finished work ready for the kiln.

I don't really know that a solution can be found, much less implemented artificially, as the process of building a collective foundation, a community, is an organic one, not a mechanical one.

And there is always the distinct possibility that I am just a griping old crank who dislikes most poetry and should retire to the hermitage once and for all and wait for visionary access to something other than words on a page.

Nemo