[Bill Carpenter]

We generally cut each other slack on this. Some comments may click months (or years?) after they are given. Some apparent defensiveness may include an eager engagement. Sometimes people just don't have the energy to spare for responses but that doesn't mean they don't appreciate thoughtful reactions to their posts. If you feel someone is just blowing off your comments, you can stop commenting, but you may be wrong about that. Arguing with suggestions is frowned on, but that can be part of the process of assimilating the suggestion into one's existing thinking and feeling about the line. Keep throwing your pennies into the well, please!

[Bill Carpenter]

And poets themselves are extremely reticent. I often compare them to woodworkers in this: few will talk to you about theory of woodworking. They'd find such talk useless. But you can pick up an awful lot of theory and ideas if you listen closely while they're working over a newly crafted cabinet.

That's good, Bill. I have sometimes had the suspicion that poets were deliberately concealing hard-won secrets of their craft even when pretending to teach and critique. But it's really just a temporary mismatch of what's on your mind with what's on mine, right?

[Roger Slater]

The idea that poets who post their poems are under an obligation to agree with the crits they receive, and to revise accordingly, is absolutely ridiculous. I mean, it's completely off the wall, and I find it astounding that you have started a thread to complain that poets have failed in their duty to do whatever the critics command them to do. I mean, huh? Are you actually serious? Really? If I post a poem, I am breaking a rule if I don't immediately adopt a suggestion posted in a comment? Really? That's absurd.

I suppose you find it hard to believe that someone who posts a poem and doesn't immediately comply with critical suggestions ever had a sufficiently open mind about revision to justify posting, but I can't see why it's such a hard concept to accept that sometimes a poet may wish to subject a poem he or she likes to critical scrutiny and may thereupon determine that the poem is fine the way it is, or with minor revisions. There's a difference between being willing to revise and feeling obligated to revise.

I get the sense that you are personally offended when a poet doesn't accept your suggestions for revision, and that's at the heart of your complaint, but if I'm right, all I can say is get over it. It's not about you. Asking someone for critique is not the same thing as inviting them to be a co-author of what you have written. And the idea that you would question the motives or bona fides of a poet just because he or she might not adopt your brilliant insights is not appealing.

[Julie Steiner]

Critiques do have value, even if they don't seem to be appreciated by the intended recipient. Some critics have a talent for diagnosing problems in others' poems, and when I read such diagnoses, that helps me to recognize or avoid the same flaws in my own poems. That advice remains helpful to me, whether or not the author of the poem under discussion chooses to apply that specific advice in that specific case.

Still, I think it's understandable for critics and bystanders to lose patience, when the original poster of a poem thread doesn't seem appreciative of the time and effort others put into critiques. Even off-target critiques take time to compose. I know, having composed many of them.

Not every problem requires a legislative solution, though. People just gradually get less generous with their critiques for poets who don't seem appreciative of them. If someone doesn't seem to like my crits, but likes crits from others, I just let them enjoy the crits from others. And if they don't enjoy anyone's, they'll soon receive too few to make it worth their while to hang around.

[Siham Karami]

Elise,

There is no such thing to me as a useless critique. Unlike some, I usually try to act on many of the suggestions and see what transpires. I may in the end go back to where I started. But the writer's journey is his/hers alone. The critique is however invaluable. Something I thought was great may well be mediocre at best, for reasons I couldn't see. Often I've been able to make my own changes after the thread is long gone, because it takes time to digest all this. I tried even in my last thread to explain to you that although I ultimately didn't take your suggestion, I tried it, which led to a valuable change no one had brought up.

There's a rule about having to crit others' work before posting one's own that has frequently been invoked, and sometimes more accomplished members are admonished for not responding to crits by even posting a comment, something frowned upon. But as to how one revises or not, that must always be the poet's prerogative.

Siham

[Max Goodman]

I've had a similar impression to Elise's. It's not only that some poets dismiss all crits, but the way they do it has given me the impression they're not really interested, that for them our workshops are really just vanity sites. Of course, the solution is not to click on their threads.