[momdebomb]

This has got to be the best website ever.

[RCL]

Agreed, mom, and Julie has to be a dynamite teacher, whatever she teaches. Such clarity! Such sanity!

------------------
Ralph

[momdebomb]

I want to share an example of an excellent "bad" crit, comment, workshopping (sorry Richard), whatever. This one is nothing like a drive-by, folks. Besides that, it's dead-on.

"I don't think this is a good formal choice for you,
although I can understand your urge to experiment. You get off wrong-footed metrically with "the DEV-il DAN-ces ON the HEAD of a PIN." What's the big deal about an anapest at the end of a line? The problem is the very weak stress on "on." That, followed by an anapest, really muddles the rhythm. Thereafter, though, your meter is too regular and feels strained to me, a familiar problem, one I still labor with in IP. You also end-stop excessively, which is always a temptation in this form.
Not at all sure what you mean by "headless spirits." In general the abstract language here compares poorly with the descriptions I have seen you do so well in other poems."

Alan Sullivan

Alan, would you consider doing me the honor of commenting on something redeemable of mine if you can find one?

Sharon P.

[Paul Deane]

I'd like to add a comment to this discussion, as I may have a somewhat unique perspective to add here.

Before either Alan Sullivan or I came to this board we had a very long series of email discussions about alliterative/accentual verse, metrical matters, including rather extensive discussions of various pieces of my Sir Gawain translation and some of my other poems.

I found the discussion invaluable.

It also required a very thick skin.

There is a place for intense and combative discussion that is not intended to be personal. On the other hand (and I hope, Alan, you won't be offended when I say this) Alan does have a tendency to express himself in ways that come across as dismissive. I wish Alan would restrain that side of himself; on the other hand, I'd rather have his critiques even when they're rather brutally phrased. My poem "Freeway Dawn" benefited rather handsomely from his slash-and-burn mode of criticism, but I had to supply the determination to go on and rewrite the poem after he'd directed the first version to the trash can where it belonged.

The problem with a public board, of course, is that you get people at all levels of poetic skill, personal finesse, and capacity for debate. We shouldn't be too surprised that a critical free-for-all isn't for everybody.

[Alan Sullivan]

Hello Paul. Glad you added your perspective. I'm not trying to wiggle out of anything here. Sometimes I am dismissive. Always, however, for the furtherance of the art and craft, as I perceive them, and not for the sake of dismissal itself. Actually what I enjoy more than the clash of ideas is the conciliation that frequently follows, when emotions subside and new, wider perspectives open on both sides of the discussion---for I learn and benefit during these encounters too.

Sharon, in that spirit, I will confess to some regret that I was so brusque with you the other evening and didn't give in full my reasons for the dismissive tone. The critique you quote above is somewhat softened by its reasoned argument. I could excuse myself on grounds that it was late and I was tired after a bad day. Those things are true, but irrelevant. Perhaps it's all for the best anyway. A very interesting discussion has ensued. It would have been much less trouble to write a paragraph or two instead of a few lines, back at the start of all this. Instead, we have all gotten a chance to reflect.

And I hope Richard does not mind our having stormed through his quiet corner of the Sphere.

Alan Sullivan

[Richard Wakefield]

Alan, I'm about as tickled as a boy can be to have all this happening here. Language matters, whether the language of poetry or the language of discussing poetry. I believe we get better at whatever language we use by using it, evaluating the response against whatever we hoped to get, and trying again. And again. It should be an endless conversation, and nobody gets the last word. That's why there's far more written about Frost than Frost himself wrote, and why that's as it should be. For my money, it's wonderful to realize that there's always something more to be said.
Richard

[Robert J. Clawson]

Workshopping

"She nests spoons in his KitchenAid.
Her egg-yolks crust his Creusets.
Thomas’ Muffin farina orts
crowd, like lice, his cutting board."

Draft of Shroud of Knockwurst
Robert J. Clawson, 2/28/01


Alice exhorts, "Wrong word!"
where I’d used "lice" for "orts"
that English muffins shed.
(Note: change back to "farina,"
which crawls my retina, like lice.)

What to write? Maybe what I’d said
preceding "orts" was wrong:
it set "lice" off.
Maybe, as a child, she’d suffered lice
or worse. Maybe...maybe none of this is right.

{Note to self: change lice to nits.}


Bob

[Charles Albert]

One of the strengths of this board is the frankness bordering on rudeness of the mods; there is an inverse relationship between the maturity of the poet and their ability to accept criticism. I'm always glad to be rid of someone who can't take anything other than praise. And I'm even gladder when an abused poet doesn't run away because that means they're willing to learn. Sharon is a perfect example.

Also, Richard, you wrote a damn good poem up there.

[Terese Coe]

Relevant to this discussion is Richard Tillinghast quoting Rebecca West in The New Criterion online, a piece called "Rebecca West and the Tragedy of Yugoslavia,"


www.newcriterion.com/archive/10/jun92/west/htm

"All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing. Here it could be seen how the meaning of the Crucifixion had been hidden from us, though it was written clear."

Terese

[MacArthur]

How is this for a deal?...if anyone is offended by one of my notes, they need only send me a PM and I will amend or erase it.
I gather something has to be left.

If someone doesn't like my critique, I don't care that much about another person's thread.

My own threads are differant-- they belong to me.

Everyone could follow this rule.

(Although it's unreasonable to ask Alex to do any more than he's already done, it is nice that on some sites, like Open Diary, an author can simply delete notes off his thread, if he likes. It takes away most of the motivation for the snipers and cyber-crazies.)

[This message has been edited by MacArthur (edited March 22, 2001).]