Damn

[sweetsoul]

Why, madam! We haven't even met, and yet you despise an important aspect of my personality! Well, feel free to--critics as well as artists must weather critical comment.

Criticism, I think, has an important role in the artistic mix. Not as important a role as artists have (which should go without saying but not always does), but an important role nonetheless.

Good criticism (and "good" is an especially important qualifier) is invaluable. It can point out work that is unjustly neglected. It can cause readers to rethink work that is perhaps unjustly praised.

But merely to reject comment on work because it might say something that could be construed as negative is to, I think, live a Pollyanna existence. Being aware of potential defects in one's work I would think helps one keep not only perspective but helps guard against complacency and sloppiness.

Not everyone welcomes it. Here, I think, if you say you don't want it, people will leave you alone.

Tzara

What you say is true.
But I was talking about those critics who just criticise, without offering something.
Positive and constructive criticism, I have no trouble with.
Just plain negative and destructive I don‘t abide with.
I thought when I posted. I had just become a critic. The type I despise. The one who criticise, without offering something.
I had a moral and ethical debate with myself about it. lol.

 

[bogusbrig]

Since this thread has diviated into criticism of critics, I have a gripe against critics.

Let me say first, I think good criticism is invaluable and necessary.

What pisses me off is that when artists/writers reach a certain stature they seem to graduate onto an untouchable list because their work has a monetary value (or some other interest. Career?) to third parties. I've read whithering criticism of artists/writers starting out in their career and then seen top artists/writers (monetary value of their product appears the key to me) treated with kid gloves. Or maybe it is the coke handed out at parties for launching books or exhibition openings (been there and seen it). Or maybe critics get back handers.

Most writers/artists who have monetary value to their product because they are popular (good luck to them) not because they produce better work (which is of course subjective). However if you compare criticisms by the same critic of A and B, it is almost a law that the artist/writer who has monetary value to their product is treated with a respect not afforded to the other artist/writer.

 

[flyguy69]

I remember a statistic provided a conference on institutional changes: when proposing a dramatic shift in the way an institution functions you can expect that 15% of the participants will support the proposal out of current frustrations, 15% will resist it out of fear, and 70% will withhold their vote until they see which side is winning.

I think the same phenomenon appears in critique (everywhere): many critics simply want to be in the winning camp so they go with the flow on work by popular artisits regardless of merit.

On the other hand, we all need our bread buttered. If my employment depended upon the review I gave my publisher's daughter's first book of cat poems, I might look up new euphemisms for turds!

Since this thread has diviated into criticism of critics, I have a gripe against critics.

Let me say first, I think good criticism is invaluable and necessary.

What pisses me off is that when artists/writers reach a certain stature they seem to graduate onto an untouchable list because their work has a monetary value (or some other interest. Career?) to third parties. I've read whithering criticism of artists/writers starting out in their career and then seen top artists/writers (monetary value of their product appears the key to me) treated with kid gloves. Or maybe it is the coke handed out at parties for launching books or exhibition openings (been there and seen it). Or maybe critics get back handers.

Most writers/artists who have monetary value to their product because they are popular (good luck to them) not because they produce better work (which is of course subjective). However if you compare criticisms by the same critic of A and B, it is almost a law that the artist/writer who has monetary value to their product is treated with a respect not afforded to the other artist/writer.

 

[Tzara]

Since this thread has diviated into criticism of critics, I have a gripe against critics.

Let me say first, I think good criticism is invaluable and necessary.

What pisses me off is that when artists/writers reach a certain stature they seem to graduate onto an untouchable list because their work has a monetary value (or some other interest. Career?) to third parties. I've read whithering criticism of artists/writers starting out in their career and then seen top artists/writers (monetary value of their product appears the key to me) treated with kid gloves. Or maybe it is the coke handed out at parties for launching books or exhibition openings (been there and seen it). Or maybe critics get back handers.

Most writers/artists who have monetary value to their product because they are popular (good luck to them) not because they produce better work (which is of course subjective). However if you compare criticisms by the same critic of A and B, it is almost a law that the artist/writer who has monetary value to their product is treated with a respect not afforded to the other artist/writer.

I would agree with you, Brigster, in some cases. Reviewers are probably loath to slam someone like Stephen King too hard as they may need/want/hope to interview him in the future to satisfy whatever publication they write for. The same would be true of anyone in a position where part of executing their job is dependent on the good graces of the interviewee, when comment from that person is much more important to the publication than dispassionate assessment of the work in question. This happens, certainly, in all of the arts--reviewers are not the stars of the show. Nor for that matter, should they be.

But here we are talking about poetry. Does anybody make any money in poetry? The only person I can think of who has (there may of course be others) is Wyn Cooper, who had the dumb luck to have something of his picked up by Sheryl Crow and used as the lyric to a multi-platinum song. Surely this is not the normal case. Poetry simply doesn't pay.

There are other considerations, of course. This article, posted earlier by anonamouse speaks to academic collegialism as a gating factor in who is taken seriously as a poet and who is not. It suggests a reviewer wouldn't slam, say, John Ashbery too much as he is part of the "group" of established "good" writers.

But I think that argument applies mainly to reviewers--people who work for publications (newspapers, magazines, etc.) who are trying to review or otherwise assess writing. Academic critics I don't think have the same coercive pressures. An assistant professor at Cow College wouldn't, I think, need to worry about what Stephen King (or John Ashbery) might think about a particular critical analysis of their work. There are still pressures, of course. For an academic, being too far outside the "standard critical orbit" could be a barrier to publication and, at least in the States, if you don't publish, you don't have a job.

Still, somehow, reassessment of writers goes on. Perhaps only seriously after they're dead, but it happens nonetheless.

I think.

 

[Tzara]

Tzara

What you say is true.
But I was talking about those critics who just criticise, without offering something.
Positive and constructive criticism, I have no trouble with.
Just plain negative and destructive I don‘t abide with.
I thought when I posted. I had just become a critic. The type I despise. The one who criticise, without offering something.
I had a moral and ethical debate with myself about it. lol.

Sometimes "negative" criticism is what is called for. This is a good example.

In general, criticism of poems in development is almost of necessity largely "negative" (i.e., pointing out areas where there are problems in the poem), though good criticism also would include some suggestions for improvement. Certainly it should also point out what is good and worth keeping as well, so that the baby isn't thrown out with the bath water. (BEEP BEEP BEEP the Cliché-O-Meter sounds off!)

Reviews, by their nature, are oftentimes somewhat harsh. What a reviewer is attempting to do is assess the quality of the reviewed work. If it is bad, it should be panned. That is the nature of submitting work for publication--people make judgments about it. As I said, here (because of the amateur nature of the site) I think people are generally kinder about their comments than they would be otherwise. It is my experience that the new poem reviewers only comment on those poems they feel are worthy of attention. Bad poems are not normally mentioned.

So don't feel badly about whether you are being "badly" critical (i.e., mean). If I say something stupid or dull, I'd like someone to point that out. It may hurt my feelings, but if my goal is to improve as a writer (which I at least like to think it is) then if you have made a salient comment, I should appreciate it.

 

[bogusbrig]

But here we are talking about poetry. Does anybody make any money in poetry? The only person I can think of who has (there may of course be others) is Wyn Cooper, who had the dumb luck to have something of his picked up by Sheryl Crow and used as the lyric to a multi-platinum song. Surely this is not the normal case. Poetry simply doesn't pay.

On the whole no, it doesn't pay but there are academic seats with big pay packets for the annointed.

I remember reading Seamus Heaney's Death Of A Naturalist in the early seventies and thinking this is amazing. Then some twenty years later reading his book, Seeing Things and thinking, this is Seamus Heaney being Seamus Heaney. Rather like the the Rolling Stones, done nothing for years but self parody and they should have died in a plane crash and let us remember them for being glorious. Becoming self parody didn't stop him winning the Nobel Prize nor taking a seat at Oxford and having critics lay their coats on the ground for him to walk on. I never read one critique of his latest work that ever so slighty, ever so politely, raise a question mark. He had become one of the untouchables.

Still, somehow, reassessment of writers goes on. Perhaps only seriously after they're dead, but it happens nonetheless.

I think.

Hmm. Only the big names are reassessed, if at all but a writer's/artist's work does seem to fall out of favour for a year or two when they die, before making a storming comeback. If you haven't made it in your life time you can bet your work dies with you. I said something like this on another thread and one or two names of people's work becoming well known after their death were put forward but these seemed to be the exceptions that prove the rule.

Having been an avid rummager in the second hand bookstores down the Charing Cross Road when I lived in London, I found many an interesting poetry collection by someone I had never heard of and who had apparently slipped straight through the literary world and straight down the toilet. I found enough good poetry to suggest that annointment doesn't depend on quality.

Maybe there is a poetry critic out there that loves poetry enough to reject the claret and caviar receptions and take a short detour through the secondhand bookstores in search of hidden diamonds.

 

[twelveoone]

Dr. Joseph S. Salemi

I love this guy

hmmm, a Doctor, classics too.
end rhyme...
about as deep as a dime, but what the hell - good doggeral

 

[twelveoone]

I would agree with you, Brigster, in some cases. Reviewers are probably loath to slam someone like Stephen King too hard as they may need/want/hope to interview him in the future to satisfy whatever publication they write for. The same would be true of anyone in a position where part of executing their job is dependent on the good graces of the interviewee, when comment from that person is much more important to the publication than dispassionate assessment of the work in question. This happens, certainly, in all of the arts--reviewers are not the stars of the show. Nor for that matter, should they be.

But here we are talking about poetry. Does anybody make any money in poetry? The only person I can think of who has (there may of course be others) is Wyn Cooper, who had the dumb luck to have something of his picked up by Sheryl Crow and used as the lyric to a multi-platinum song. Surely this is not the normal case. Poetry simply doesn't pay.

There are other considerations, of course. This article, posted earlier by anonamouse speaks to academic collegialism as a gating factor in who is taken seriously as a poet and who is not. It suggests a reviewer wouldn't slam, say, John Ashbery too much as he is part of the "group" of established "good" writers.

But I think that argument applies mainly to reviewers--people who work for publications (newspapers, magazines, etc.) who are trying to review or otherwise assess writing. Academic critics I don't think have the same coercive pressures. An assistant professor at Cow College wouldn't, I think, need to worry about what Stephen King (or John Ashbery) might think about a particular critical analysis of their work. There are still pressures, of course. For an academic, being too far outside the "standard critical orbit" could be a barrier to publication and, at least in the States, if you don't publish, you don't have a job.

Still, somehow, reassessment of writers goes on. Perhaps only seriously after they're dead, but it happens nonetheless.

I think.

I think, thereforth I yam -
"standard critical orbit" how true,

check out this guy
Dan Schneider

people have their perceptions, and their limitations...
screw 'em, write around them
I think it is worth looking at these two critics of the dullness of writing, I read them every chance I get. Even though I am greatly influenced by modernism, i.e. Eliot, they make good points as to its shortcomings.

 

[wildsweetone]

I love this guy

hmmm, a Doctor, classics too.
end rhyme...
about as deep as a dime, but what the hell - good doggeral

from that site i was just reading:

The Last Party on Bourbon Street
by Arthur Mortensen

Wailing inside the bar,
They thought the storm was far,
A paleolithic dream,

A fantasy to spite,
A pale ghost lost in the night,
Cassandra’s lonely scream.

The lively fruitlessy scanned
Wet papers for a plan
To waken the partygoers,

But underneath good notes
They couldn’t hear the boats
Drifting for lack of rowers.

The drunkards raised their glasses
At passing, shapely asses,
And ordered one more round.

A tout flung wide a door
To show the crowd a whore;
A rat sought out high ground.

A drinker ordered a jumbo
To wash down his gumbo
And felt a chill in his toes.

A tourist from Nevada,
Too smashed to climb a ladder,
Felt something up his nose.

Feeling exempt from slaughter
They failed to notice water
Rising above the sill.

An hour on stolen wine
Blinkered their eyes to brine,
An oily, fetid swill

That swept across the street
Tickling their well-shod feet,
Spoiling their stolen boots

Until they noticed, cursing,
White caps from a hearse ring
Around their knees. In cahoots

With death, they found themselves
Stuck by a knife that delves
Beneath the skin for hearts.

The water at their necks
Set them adrift as wrecks
Practicing dying arts.

A singer from Tipatina’s
Shouts “you should have seen us;”
Her hair is ragged, shorn.

Wet echoes in the clubs,
A floating chair that rubs
Against a sunken horn

Whose mute floats, bobbing
Among the looters robbing--
One prays for cover, fog,

A dinosaur to roar,
Or Dizzy. A shattered door,
Bearing a sobbing dog,

Spins loose; a coffin bangs
Against the overhangs
From crumbling balconies.

Fats Domino's not lost,
But we'll never know the cost
of a city on its knees.

who is Cassandra?


did BB write that essay?

I'm often accused of writing poems on "unsavory" subjects such as crime, violence, and prostitution. I don't feel that those things are major preoccupations in my work, but I'll say this: vice has a lot more poetic potential than stories about your grandchildren, your azalea bushes, or your latest triple bypass.

i can't disagree with that at this point in my writing. vice is sometimes that untouchable that stirs temptations and trouble within. it's exciting to write about.

(I think the doctor wrote a better poem than my 'chance challenge' will turn out to be. but it sure is fun playing with the words.)

 

[Tzara]

who is Cassandra?

It's probably a reference to this. True prophetic comments that are ignored.

 

[twelveoone]

from that site i was just reading:


who is Cassandra ?


did BB write that essay?



i can't disagree with that at this point in my writing. vice is sometimes that untouchable that stirs temptations and trouble within. it's exciting to write about.

(I think the doctor wrote a better poem than my 'chance challenge' will turn out to be. but it sure is fun playing with the words.)

Cassandra

I have to go now, write about MY bypass, liliacs, and whatnots

 

[Angeline]

It's probably a reference to this. True prophetic comments that are ignored.

"I see trouble. I see darkness. I see lawyers."

"You're such a Cassandra."

"I am not such a Cassandra. I am Cassandra. That's who I am."

(Exchange between Lenny and Cassandra from Woody Allen's Mighty Aprodite)

 

[wildsweetone]

Cassandra

I have to go now, write about MY bypass, liliacs, and whatnots

is the 'whatnots' where the vices reside?

*smiling* don't answer that.

 

[twelveoone]

is the 'whatnots' where the vices reside?

*smiling* don't answer that.

Oh, Oh, I just gave away the plot

 

[twelveoone]

Sometimes "negative" criticism is what is called for. This is a good example.

In general, criticism of poems in development is almost of necessity largely "negative" (i.e., pointing out areas where there are problems in the poem), though good criticism also would include some suggestions for improvement. Certainly it should also point out what is good and worth keeping as well, so that the baby isn't thrown out with the bath water. (BEEP BEEP BEEP the Cliché-O-Meter sounds off!)

Reviews, by their nature, are oftentimes somewhat harsh. What a reviewer is attempting to do is assess the quality of the reviewed work. If it is bad, it should be panned. That is the nature of submitting work for publication--people make judgments about it. As I said, here (because of the amateur nature of the site) I think people are generally kinder about their comments than they would be otherwise. It is my experience that the new poem reviewers only comment on those poems they feel are worthy of attention. Bad poems are not normally mentioned.

So don't feel badly about whether you are being "badly" critical (i.e., mean). If I say something stupid or dull, I'd like someone to point that out. It may hurt my feelings, but if my goal is to improve as a writer (which I at least like to think it is) then if you have made a salient comment, I should appreciate it.

It's funny, both you and bogus seem to have an different defination of "reviewer" and "critic" than I do. Doesn't matter.
Came across this wonderfull site, lists ten different ways of looking at a poem. Hmmm, so much for the Rubic - con. I am sure there are more.
I do try to get into the skull of the authour, after all I realize my cabbage may be different than their lettuce, but sometimes I just see the wilt that dressing won't help .
Just thought I'd toss this out.

Tzara
jab, jab, jab, overhand right
c'mon put me against the ropes
I can play rope-a-dope also

 

[Angeline]

It's funny, both you and bogus seem to have an different defination of "reviewer" and "critic" than I do. Doesn't matter.
Came across this wonderfull site, lists ten different ways of looking at a poem. Hmmm, so much for the Rubic - con. I am sure there are more.
I do try to get into the skull of the authour, after all I realize my cabbage may be different than their lettuce, but sometimes I just see the wilt that dressing won't help .
Just thought I'd toss this out.

Tzara
jab, jab, jab, overhand right
c'mon put me against the ropes
I can play rope-a-dope also

That's an excellent site you've linked 1201. Lots of good reading there. I started poking around in it and found this, which sort of summarizes what a lot of people here have been saying.

What distinguishes poetry from other literary compositions? Nothing, says a vociferous body of opinion: they are all texts, to be understood by the same techniques as a philosophic treatise or tabloid newspaper. But that makes sense only to readers of advanced magazines, for poetry does indeed seem different. Even if we accept that poetry can be verse or prose — verse simply having a strong metrical element — poetry is surely distinguished by moving us deeply. In fact, for all but Postmodernists, it is an art form, and must therefore do what all art does: represent something of the world, express or evoke emotion, please us by its form, and stand on its own as something autonomous and self-defining.

 

[twelveoone]

Ah, Angeline, one of the 10 finest writers to ever grace this place. (er, just my opinon, of course)
shall we punch each other silly over Chomsky?

nahhh, I have to save my stength for Tzara

 

[bogusbrig]

It's funny, both you and bogus seem to have an different defination of "reviewer" and "critic" than I do. Doesn't matter.
Came across this wonderfull site, lists ten different ways of looking at a poem. Hmmm, so much for the Rubic - con. I am sure there are more.
I do try to get into the skull of the authour, after all I realize my cabbage may be different than their lettuce, but sometimes I just see the wilt that dressing won't help .
Just thought I'd toss this out.

Tzara
jab, jab, jab, overhand right
c'mon put me against the ropes
I can play rope-a-dope also

I'd love to know how your lettuce defines 'reviewer' and 'critic'.

I have to admit the caterpillars have had a good munch at my cabbage which wasn't a prize one in the first place, though it has ambitions of being a sunflower.

You've put some great sites our way recently. Just scanned them but there seems many hours of interesting reading.

 

[Angeline]

Ah, Angeline, one of the 10 finest writers to ever grace this place. (er, just my opinon, of course)
shall we punch each other silly over Chomsky?

nahhh, I have to save my stength for Tzara

My favorite Chomsky line:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Now who can argue with that?

 

[twelveoone]

I'd love to know how your lettuce defines 'reviewer' and 'critic'.

I have to admit the caterpillars have had a good munch at my cabbage which wasn't a prize one in the first place, though it has ambitions of being a sunflower.

You've put some great sites our way recently. Just scanned them but there seems many hours of interesting reading.

Review:
‘In the poems of Neruda, Vallejo, Jimenez, Machado, Rilke, the poem is an extension of the substance of the man, no different from his skin or his hands. The substance of the man who wrote the poem reaches far out into the darkness and the poem is his whole body, seeing with his ears and his fingers and his hair.’
From critic
Eliot was a good critic, forces you to look at things differnently, an analysis
Reviews are generic book blurb nonsense
Just my def.

 

[Tzara]

I remember reading Seamus Heaney's Death Of A Naturalist in the early seventies and thinking this is amazing. Then some twenty years later reading his book, Seeing Things and thinking, this is Seamus Heaney being Seamus Heaney. Rather like the the Rolling Stones, done nothing for years but self parody and they should have died in a plane crash and let us remember them for being glorious. Becoming self parody didn't stop him winning the Nobel Prize nor taking a seat at Oxford and having critics lay their coats on the ground for him to walk on. I never read one critique of his latest work that ever so slighty, ever so politely, raise a question mark. He had become one of the untouchables.

Well, I'm not that familiar with Heaney and certainly completely unfamiliar with the critical dialogue about his work. I think it is not uncommon for an artist of any kind to not really advance much over their initial work. Perhaps he has only the one thing to say and is just saying it over and over. I think John Updike writes marvellous novels but thematically he's just writing Rabbit, Run over and over and over again. My enjoyment of his later work is in the details of construction. I don't know anyone who can craft better sentences than Updike.

The artist who is continually inventive throughout his or her career is extremely rare. Joyce, maybe? (Kind of cheating, since he actually wrote so little.) Shakespeare? Monet? Matisse?

It's really hard to do. Even for really good artists.

Hmm. Only the big names are reassessed, if at all but a writer's/artist's work does seem to fall out of favour for a year or two when they die, before making a storming comeback. If you haven't made it in your life time you can bet your work dies with you. I said something like this on another thread and one or two names of people's work becoming well known after their death were put forward but these seemed to be the exceptions that prove the rule.

You're probably right that it would be extremely rare for someone with no critical standing during their lifetime to somehow get discovered after their death. I was thinking of citing several women whose work has received considerable attention since I was in college--Aphra Behn and Kate Chopin, for example. Brought back to prominence by hoards of postcolonialist or feminist PhD students eagerly sifting the back stacks in the library looking for buried gold. I recently saw a production of a Restoration comedy by Hannah Cowley, whose work had virtually been ignored since the 19th century, and it was delightful. Fully as good, I think, as Sheridan or Congreve. But Cowley's work was very popular during her lifetime. So it is merely being rediscovered--not resurrected.

Having been an avid rummager in the second hand bookstores down the Charing Cross Road when I lived in London, I found many an interesting poetry collection by someone I had never heard of and who had apparently slipped straight through the literary world and straight down the toilet. I found enough good poetry to suggest that annointment doesn't depend on quality.

Maybe there is a poetry critic out there that loves poetry enough to reject the claret and caviar receptions and take a short detour through the secondhand bookstores in search of hidden diamonds.

As I said earlier, I think the best bet here would be for some enterprising young PhD student, looking for something rather less commented upon than Shakespeare or Joyce, to dredge up something worthwhile from the graveyard.

I can happen, but isn't likely.

 

[Tzara]

check out this guy
Dan Schneider

Geez. You can sure dig up some cranks. Schneider is pretty hilarious, though. Liked his disembowelment of Donald Hall.

 

[Tzara]

Review:
‘In the poems of Neruda, Vallejo, Jimenez, Machado, Rilke, the poem is an extension of the substance of the man, no different from his skin or his hands. The substance of the man who wrote the poem reaches far out into the darkness and the poem is his whole body, seeing with his ears and his fingers and his hair.’
From critic
Eliot was a good critic, forces you to look at things differnently, an analysis
Reviews are generic book blurb nonsense
Just my def.

Reviews by their nature are, I think, rarely critical, i.e. rarely engage in more than superficial critique of the work being reviewed. The function of a review is to advise readers (or viewers, in the case of art or film criticism) whether something is worth their time to read or see. As such, they are really not analytical in nature--just advisory. If I want to know whether a new Peter Weir movie is worth seeing, I might check Roger Ebert's review of it. Based on what he says and on my experience with how his opinions and taste align with mine, I could probably form a pretty good idea of whether I would like the movie or not.

Criticism serves a different purpose. Criticism analyzes work in various ways: how technique is employed to convey meaning or how something fits into a historical context. Ebert's The Great Movies contains short little essays on movies--each about the length of one of his reviews--but these essays focus on elements of what make the movie in question great. They are analytical comments on the film as art. Their purpose is not advisory. By their inclusion in the book you already know they're recommended.

It is of course possible to write a critical review--combine a review (evaluation and recommendation) with criticism (analytical comment)--but I don't think that's common.

That's how I would distinguish the two.

 

[twelveoone]

Geez. You can sure dig up some cranks. Schneider is pretty hilarious, though. Liked his disembowelment of Donald Hall.

about a third of the links don't work, but I love this guy.

I mean this, as a favour, can you tell me what you think of his essay on Robinson Jeffers

BTW as to your allegation that the pimp did it, that knowledge wasn't public, where were you on the night of....

 

[Tzara]

about a third of the links don't work, but I love this guy.

Yeah, I saw that. Wanted to read a couple of the articles he linked to and they didn't come up.

His formatting is very hard to read as well.

I mean this, as a favour, can you tell me what you think of his essay on Robinson Jeffers

Sure, but it may take a while. I want to copy it into Word and reformat it so I can read it without destroying what's left of my eyesight. Plus the damn thing's almost 5000 words in length.

Plus I have never read anything by Jeffers, so if you need to know something about him, I won't be able to comment on that.

BTW as to your allegation that the pimp did it, that knowledge wasn't public, where were you on the night of....

Right here, typing in my wonderfully memorable and timstamped little missives for this board. Got me an alibi, sir.