[Esther Cameron]

Hello all,
In this post I would like to respond to Arthur Mortenson's editorial in the current issue of Expansive Poetry and Music Online, "Isolation and the Poet," (http://www.n2hos.com/acm/), which questions the value of the group critical process. Mortenson holds that to create in "isolation" is preferable to submitting to a process which he depicts as a kind of exercise in group violence:
"The paradigm for most seminars seems akin to a group of children who gather to throw a ball at someone in the
middle of a their circle; the object is to hit the child with the ball until he catches it and throws it
back. The one in the middle, then, is battered until he learns to do the same thing in return. Then he
gets to join the great circle." A poem influenced by this process, he says, is likely to resemble "a house designed by a committee of bureaucrats." He concludes that "The best time to show a poem to a seminar is after it's published."

I share many of Mortenson's misgivings. On the "Eratosphere," I've been impressed by the atmosphere of courtesy and dedication. Yet, I must honestly say that I do not get much from the critical process, as such. I seldom feel like sharing a poem until I've done my best for it. I know the rules of meter and the current conventions of diction, and have weighed the costs and benefits of any deviation. If I post a poem for "criticism," then, I feel as though I'm doing it under false pretenses, inviting people to waste their time. But then, why not just stay away?

The reason is simple: I don't thrive in isolation. It takes a long time these days to get a poem published; must one wait for that in order to share what one has written? I like to read what others are writing, too. Though I seldom take advice received in a workshop, though I am often dismayed by the changes others make in their poems in response to criticism, the contact with other poets keeps me going.

I would like to raise two questions: do others also feel this way? If so, could an alternative convention for the sharing of our work be adopted?

Let me confess that I have often longed for someone just to look at my poems in the way we used to look at a poem in a college English class. We used to assume then that the poem was as it should be, and the aim of our scrutiny was just to figure out what was so neat about it. We didn't have to decide whether it was good or not -- that had been decided for us, and there was also no question of changing the poem. We had only to enjoy and try to understand.

For instance, I recently submitted a sonnet, "Peonies and Cedar," to the Metrical Poetry board. The comments were all courteous, and some were appreciative. But the discussion mostly centered on the poem's slight departures from convention (archaic touches, deviations from metrical regularity, the use of colorless verbs where one might expect something more vigorous). No one thought of using these departures as clues, and following them to the heart of the poem. I think if I'd been commenting on it I'd have noted the way time unfolds in the poem, I'd talk about it as a failed return to the Garden of Eden -- as said, the kind of thing we used to pride ourselves on discovering in English class. It seems shame to overlook the good stuff while considering whether tthe poet ought to change this or that (in the event, as usual, I didn't change a word).

When I read a good poem by someone else, I feel like digging this stuff out. Often, the poem will suggest to me another poem, my own or another's, which I want to lob back. (Golias, delightfully, did do this by posting Hardy's "Afterwards" in response). That way, a poetic dialogue gets going. On the other hand if I don't care for a poem, then except in some access of folly which I later regret, I just don't say anything. My experience is that "Those whom the inner ear does not advise Are seldom helped when others criticize." If anything poets may lose touch with their inner voice, and go on to produce something that is at best acceptable, but not *necessary*, in the way that the real poem is necessary.

What are your thoughts on this?

Esther

[Richard Wakefield]

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

[Michael Juster]

I have two thoughts on Esther's comments. I disagree with Arthur's main point, but I think I understand what is driving him and I share his concern. The literary elite has established a banal and inbred infrastructure that reinforces the perceived value of vacuous claptrap. A successful poet today has to insulate himself or herself from all that to be truly successful as opposed to winning some grants and publishing stuff nobody really understands or likes. Like Gerald Hartnett at the late journal Hellas and the distinguished "Old Formalist" Richard Moore, I think Arthur is concerned we will degrade our poetry if we come up with a formal-friendly version of that culture.
Arthur's worry is a legitimate concern, but ultimately poetry is a public act of communication, and you can't write great poems solely in isolation. Someone has to hear them, and to teach you how they are being received. Since each listener is somewhat idiosyncratic, a poet needs a range of reactions to sift the helpful comments from the unhelpful, which is what places like Eratosphere offer.
A number of people post here who react badly to criticism because they feel they poems are "done". Invariably, I feel that these people "finish" their poems in their own mind prematurely, and would benefit from continuing to push for perfection as hard as they can. This is not to say you should address every concern--a committee has yet to write a great poem--but most poems first exposed to public scrutiny can be improved at least a bit, and it is a mistake to think otherwise. Also, even the greatest poets of our time circulate and revise drafts. Unfortunately, I'm no threat to Richard Wilbur and I cannot just send my poems off to the best and brightest of the contemporary poetry scene (excluding Alan and Tim). Erato is a fine substitute for that, and I think members with the right attitude are finding this a helpful service.
I also think that if we don't develop a counterculture network, we can't create new outlets for our work and try to create an audience for accessible poetry. Without that, we will remain marginalized, and I believe too much in what we are doing to be content with that prospect.

[Kate Benedict]

"We" may not thrive in isolation, but our art does. Why, of all the art forms, do poets horde together, seeking "input"? Mozart did not need Salieri's input. The whole point of making art is to make the choices yourself.

[Michael, your comment came in as I was writing this. You wrote: "Since each listener is somewhat idiosyncratic, a poet needs a range of reactions to sift the helpful comments from the unhelpful, which is what places like Eratosphere offer." True, but what a cacaphony, sometimes!]

Esther, you raise critical questions. Nit-picking is a wearisome activity and also something of a no-brainer. Especially when a poem has obvious depth (and yours does), let's bring some depth into our commentary. All aboard.




[This message has been edited by Kate Benedict (edited March 24, 2001).]

[Tim Murphy]

From 1972 to 1995 my only contact with poets was a handful of letters from my mentors, Warren and Wilbur. Living in New York, Art doesn't know the meaning of isolation. I was utterly oblivious to anything going on in the poetry scene, hadn't even heard of New Formalism. There was an advantage to this isolation. I read only great poetry and developed my own idiosyncratic style. And I had one great reader--Alan. But I believe I'd have developed much faster if I had had the friends and the publishing venues I now have--and the Sphere. There is a palpable excitement in the formal poetry scene, and I'm writing better and more voluminously for having befriended (and competed with) the leaders of our movement. What a resource Able Muse would have been to me twenty years ago. And what a resource it is for all of you toiling as I did in total obscurity. Three cheers for Alex.

[Jim Hayes]

In all my life, I have never spoken with a poet or heard one give a reading. I have of course read poetry, but in haphazard fashion, with of course appreciation, but not always understanding

In 1999 I met Wiley Clements on-line. Wiley was been most instrumental in furthering my knowledge of poetry, form and otherwise.

Beyond Wiley's contribution I have found forum participation
invaluable. Not the nit-picking, such would be winkled out anyway, but in the great level of encouragement and direction one receives from competent poets, and from their great posts and the learned responses to them.

There is no point in indulging in intellectual onanism, not when so many varied cultural orgasms can be obtained.
Readily.
Now, ask me has my writing improved because of this forum, because of Alex.


Jim

[salt eel]

I think the core of this discussion is "isolation." The reason I am increasingly drawn to isolation is that it increases clarity. In being isolated one becomes free of the "collective illusion." This is a theistic problem. Is there anything beyond the secular? Or not? I say there is, so don't bother too much to be "understood," addressing myself to an overarching ideal, and, by extension, to all others who access it, where ever they may be.

We live in a world of Power. All conventions at some time or other in their life spans serve only stasis. All political and personal movements should join its opposite.

Personally, I think Poetry (capitalized) is just a codification of stasis, and that one must avoid that capitalization like the Buddhists who say, "If you see Buddha, kill him." As Poets we must avoid Poetry.

Criticism tends to right wing, fundamentalist.

The following is an indisputable fact: the poem the poet submits is the only poem the poet is capable of at the moment. Including you and I. Sometimes its facts, even in its mistakes, are life. Lets just read them, urging them with the disfunctionality of Eden. Progress depends upon a proper reading of the present.

Having said that I may add that I myself need readers. At alienation my dwindling life seeks heat.

[Jerry H Jenkins]

Esther,

The thrust of Mortenson's comments seem to be that poets should always keep their own counsel. After all the comments and suggestions from readers are read or heard, there's still a decision the poet must make about whether and how much to revise. There's a place for constructive comments that point out errors of convention (grammar, usage, syntax, rhetoric, structure, etc.) and there's a place for impressions and value judhments as well. The provision of comments doesn't give the poet any obligation to accept them, but they're useful as a sounding board, if nothing else.

Writers become irked or discouraged when comments seem to misunderstand or ignore what the poet thinks the poem is all about, and focus on the visible aspects of the poem. But that attitude seems to rest on the hope that the poem will become an entrée to an expanding discussion about the world the poem reveals, rather than the self-sufficient representation of its meaning without further discussion. Does the poet see the poem as a catalyst to transformation (and whose transformation?), a wholistic and completed product, or an unfolding process with no definite ends except its own elaboration? How do the respondents view it?

The way we regard our poems and their purposes affects our outlook toward the comments we receive. Maybe Mortenson sees the poem as the product. Maybe someone can create a taxonomy of discussion group encounters, expectations and outcomes.

The critiquing process in online communities is most likely to evolve by losing its edge of candor and objectivity. People who associate in groups like this either minimize their differences through gradual familiarity, and the high definition of critiques erodes, or the poet whose expectations aren't met leaves the group. Both conditions lead toward convergence among the active members, and its softening of the keen edge makes candor a valuable commodity. Some of the most useful, if painful, comments are those from intelligent and perceptive readers who aren't our friends - those who, I think, regard the poem differently from the poet, and poetry as a high and uncasual objective.

I agree with Michael - poems are exercises in communication, and we don't communicate in private. Kate remarks that we don't need others' input to make artistic choices, and that may be true. But the display of the resulting art can never usefully be a private affair. If we're the audience, poet and critic all in one, then forums like this are unnecessary and unattractive.

I thought, when I first started writing poems, that publication in a respected periodical was the best I could hope for. I've done that, a little bit, and having experienced it, I'm glad, but I prefer the discussions that occur in the online forums to that early notion of happiness. Our readers are well-informed, the feedback is quick, the comments are almost always useful, and the sense of community is far greater than one senses in viewing the inertness of a printed journal.

The critiquing process is part of that community, and it's enjoyable. It has been valuable to me, and this forum is one of the best venues I could imagine because it hasn't lost that sharp edge I mention above.

Jerry

[Paul Deane]

I think I shall try something hard to do. I have an opinion, but it's one that requires a different mode of expression ... one more suited to the medium. So, here goes ...

Prose has such power even poets converse
On this board without beats, bare of all verse
save the subject matter they seek to improve.

We'll pin down a poem, but putter about
with prosy opinions on patterns we flout.
(We're the Grand Inquisition; we're the Gurus of Groove.)

Is Mortensen right? Is this mass inquisition
loss of liberty? A lemming decision?
Just follow me, friend, it's fine in the air
and you get a grand view -- so why should I care?

[Terese Coe]

Esther

I'd like to commend you on your gently provocative post. The great draw of these poets' forums does indeed seem to be that "the contact with other poets keeps me going," as you say. Helpful feedback does indeed seem to spur one to more work. Unhelpful feedback does not.

As for "alternative convention(s) for the sharing of our work," the forums might consider a board more akin to a reading, where poets post poems and get no feedback, but would that be any fun? I'll bet not. At least a live reading gives you the facial expressions and nonverbal (as well as verbal) appreciation (or not) of live people. One doesn't get critiques but nonverbal feedback, salutary smiles and applause, silence, and possibly some desultory discussion later. It's rare that anyone gets booed, in my experience.

Live readings, readings to friends in private, and readings to friends on the phone are the "venues" in which I have most shown my work (aside from the net). In those places, I've seldom had the experience of anyone discussing a poem's "slight departures from convention," to use your neat phrase. In the poetry workshops I've conducted at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, and elsewhere, we discussed only the poems of the students, not my own, and all the subjects you mentioned came up eventually.

On these boards, poems are investigated in greater depth than I have seen elsewhere, except in hard print. All of this is to the good. Evidently, none the less, something is missing (sometimes) in terms of magnanimity of spirit.

As you put it, "No one thought of using these departures as clues, and following them to the heart of the poem." I think you called it, Esther! This does not occur too often, of course, but a number of Eratosphere's judgment-oriented writers seem never to have learned that a "willing suspension of disbelief" is often a prerequisite to comprehending a work of art.

It is true, as Kate says, that one doesn't need a board like this to write a poem. Indeed, one must consider this: it may be that some poets have been discouraged from writing after posting on such a board. I have seen posts here that strike me as evil, or close to it. It is merely their anonymity here that allows them these utterances. When we reflect that many of the poets we meet in person are quite vulnerable in terms of their work, we should conclude that this is where these boards probably have a negative effect.

No doubt for most of us the positive outweighs the negative, but that is no reason not to be concerned about the psychological Dickinsons (male or female) among us.

Terese



[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited March 25, 2001).]