Esther, a good topic, and one I've pondered. I come down on different sides of the issue, depending on my mood, I guess, and my most recent experience. For me, at their best, the boards are a conversation. Whether any specific comment causes me or someone else to change a poem is less important than that the poet has some fairly immediate sense of how the poem struck someone. Even when I'm neither poet nor commentor, the exchange gives me a chance to compare my responses to others'. And if I didn't believe that there could be some harmony of human response, I wouldn't bother showing anyone my poems, wouldn't bother reading anyone else's. I think this forum has a big advantage over the "workshop" method: there, poems that are almost always too new are critiqued by people who are almost always too naive; here, poems have often had a chance to mature, and those who comment are under no obligation to discuss anything they don't understand or about which they have nothing to say. Of course the forum doesn't always work that way. Not many things always work the way they should.
Thanks for posting this, Esther, and let's see what others have to say.
Richard
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