Critiquing poetry

[Coolmac]

For those that feel they do not know enough about critiquing poetry, reading and following this article may help you organise your method of critique.

[agib00]

Excellent article=but who is the keper of the key? The one that ranks poetry from 1-to 10? Is there  an end-all-be-all that has the answer? I think poetry is in the mind of the beholder and when, anaylyzed too much, loses it's flavor. Everyone has a story but which is right? I love Edgar Allen Poe. but if I read Annabellee one more time, I would choke. Thanks for sharing this site.

[Coolmac]

True, what makes great art different from good art is completely subjective and indeed something that critiquing isn't going to change.

However, since we're here to learn, critiquing is important. Most of the great artists (in any form) studied art before they became great. The ability to break down an art into its components helps when later you choose not to.

[agib00]

correct= everything is subjective=
Edison quit school in ninth
grade-==thank God for electricity(He was told he was too dumb to learn,)Einstein did not speak until age four=(reason) until then nothing was wrong. on that day, his tea was too hot. If only I could be so great,

[Jantar]

I tend to agree - at least when it comes to matters of taste and arguments of value. That whole nonsense discussion that raged within & without the Ivory Towers - what is better: Dylan or Keats? Those discussions are farcical at best, deplorable mostly. (When I say I think V.C. Andrews is a crap writer and Eliot maybe wrote the most beautiful poem of the 20th century, that's only interesting to people who agree with that or those who like to fight one particular corner in some heated argument. My opinion on these matters in itself is without meaning in any objective sense.)
But I think we all can agree personal taste should have no place in critiqueing stories or poems. And it's safer to leave things like value/quality to posterity anyway: they will have a much clearer and more objective view.

I don't think critiqueing is all about subjective judgements though. There is language and grammar and presentation. If a writer depicts a six years' old child who uses words a post-graduate student would have problems with, we have a duty to mention this. Same with dialogue that you know would never be spoken like that in real life. Or using verbs who can't be used in combination with an object and still doing so. And so on and so on. There are all kinds of things that should be critiqued and can be done so in an objective manner.

Critiqueing though, should not only be about finding fault: it could also be about simply showing alternatives that could be considered as well. By showing other options, the writer may go back and look at a story or poem in a new way. Not necessarily to change it but to get new insights. When we write a story we only write one version of a story that could be told in any number of ways. I think this kind of 'alternative worlds' critique can be highly useful to the writer. Maybe not for that one story but for the ones he or she will write after. Good writing is also about insights - and you can never have enough of those. Getting these particular kinds of critiques can be one way of gaining some of those insights.

But on the most basic and maybe most important level, giving critique tells the writer that people actually care about the story and that what is written is worth looking at again - and that maybe making it a better story is an option. In that sense critique can be necessary fuel.

There will always be a mixture though of the subjective and the objective in our critiqueing. That's not necessarily a bad thing. As long as the writer trusts us to truly care about the story and we trust the writer to believe we do, critique can be of great use - if only to show the writer there are people out there who care about his or her stories or poems.
Jan.

[Jantar]

Ha, talking about an objective critique of grammar...:

     "Or using verbs who can't be used..."

I didn't mean to make an example of myself but it will still do,
Jan.

[the_battousai]

actually, heh dead thread but I'm a necro XD

Anyway, I dissagree with your idea on subjectiveness.  Yes, you can think that a poem means one thing, but a poem can have only one true meaning/motive behind it.  The poet had a specific idea in mind, a specific message they wished to get across in the writing of said poem, so how can it mean anything else?  How can someone who did not write the poem tell the author what his work means?

[agib00]

subjective has many meaning--from a person' mind-of and to a particular thought etc..
I agree with you that not all will know from where your thoughts come. they are truly unique unto you.
At the same time we can read with objectivity and deem whether it is to our liking or as to word structure.form and flow.
I don't think anyone is telling us that our thoughts are wrong and they know better what we think.
I think the crits are a help in order to present "our" subjective views better so that more people might understand our thoughts as only we truly do.

[the_battousai]

right right right, I didn't make myself clear and I apologize for that.  What I was saying is that, yes, you may have the poem mean something else to you, but you cannot say that the poem means that to all that read it.  You can't say that this poem means something for everyone because 1) It will not mean the same thing to everyone and 2) the poet, at least they should, have a direct and complete idea/purpose and meaning behind their own poem.

[Mule]

A poem doesn't have to mean anything.  Much poetry is based solely on observation, therefore, such writing would never have a 'reason' for being; though people will often search for some hidden meaning.

There may be a meaning behind the following poem, if one looks hard enough, but the poem doesn't need one.

"Proletarian Portrait

                    A big young bareheaded woman
                    in an apron

                    Her hair slicked back standing
                    on the street

                    One stockinged foot toeing
                    the sidewalk

                    Her shoe in her hand.  Looking
                    intently into it

                    She pulls out the paper insole
                    to find the nail

                    That has been hurting her"

William Carlos Williams

To critique is to observe, and (though it may prick a writer), sometimes editing is a necessary evil which must be overcome in order to invite the essance of a work to its fullest potential.

Mule

[the_battousai]

Every poem is written with an intent and purpose and, therefore, has a direct meaning that it has engrained within.  You cannot write a poem without having some purpose behind writing it, even if that purpose was merely to observe on what you saw that day.  You still had the intent of sharing that with someone and having them see what you saw.  So every poem must have a purpose/meaning, everything written has a purpose/meaning.

[Jantar]

Every poem has intent and purpose...? What an extraordinary idea. I can honestly say that I hardly ever think of anything at all when I sit down to write. I just know when that urge (to write) is there again but until the moment I actually hold the pen in my hand, my mind is a complete blank. What lands on the paper comes from somewhere (inside me), no doubt but my consciousness hardly ever is in the driving seat.

As for your point that the poet's intent and purpose is important, I obstinately and wholeheartedly disagree. I've said this earlier in an other forum on this site but my sincere belief is that the moment the writer enters the public realm (invites readers in) he or she is no longer in that driving seat. Then the reader takes possession of the poem and makes and shapes it into anything that pleases him or her - including (that to me mostly useless concept of) intent and purpose.
(In high school and at Uni they always asked what the writer 'meant' with this, that or the other. My reaction always was that I don't give a damn what he or she meant. It was mine now to have fun with.)
Jan.

[Poetic_Soul]

Quote> by Howard Nemerov;
"You never ask a poet what he means, you tell him!"

I agree with this for when critiquing, if a poem is done right which I still attempt to learn by the way lol. Then the meaning will mean different things to all, in the inspirations and thoughts they bring to the person reading but the topic of the poem will always be the same. Ex: if the poem is about let say a breakup then the person who’s reading may have a bigger scorn towards breakups then the writer and may take the poem for a harsher meaning though the topic of the poem still remains about breakups its meaning has become stronger to this reader. At least that’s my opinion on a poems meaning for I feel you say how the poem makes you feel not how it is supposed to make you feel.

[Iain James Robb]

Note:

I wrote the following quite a while ago, and think I remember being drunk at the time, so it's pretty embarrassing looking back on it when I was only being half-serious. God, I'd forgotten I'd wrote this shit. I've decided to edit it now to clarify whatever points I was trying to make.

...................................................................

I happen to agree whole-heartedly with everything in the essay. If it was written in a self-justifying mode by some poet on the roll of a mainstream publisher, it would not speak so much truth. Incidentally, my longer entries on the forum have been written without the supervision of someone who'll properly edit my work. I prefer my long stuff to be edited. Too many stanzas even if it's meant to be long can bore the reader to death especially if they're in the wrong order.
 
I believe that at times the verse on this site is better than what is currently printed. In any case, I think I'm rambling off the point. I think the essay makes much sense.


Iain

[HollowKnight]

The article has answered many questions I did have and was greatly appreciated. Thank you for sharing this with us

[michelle]

thanks for this, i am new to even showing anything i have written let alone to critique anything someone else has written. this is great I will learn a lot from this!

[Solipsyatrr]

It's been a while since someone posted anything here but I'll add my point, worth what's being paid for it, doubtless! When we write then hand our work to others, we are asking them for the gift of their attention. What we write ought to be worth that gift. Otherwise we ought simply to tuck it in a journal, be silently proud we wrote anything at all, and be on our way with it.

Like it or not, words have meaning. Combinations of words convey meaning employing different "craft sets" to bring about certain "goals." The "craft set" which applies to technical writing, for instance, is obviously not the same as that which applies to journalism, which is yet again different from the craft-set employed by artistic forms of writing. The article to which the above link directs us (in a previous post) is pretty reasonable as a starting point.

We all love poetry for different reasons, but I'm willing to bet that among them is its singular ability to stir our emotions. The WC Williams poem above was so carefully observed and reported NOT as journalism, but clearly to empathy in us -- to remind us, on the largest scale, of our shared humanity, and on the smallest, of our shared petty annoyances. Otherwise, he could have said simply "I saw a plain-looking woman stop and shake a stone out of her shoe."

When I have done critique (and boy howdie have I done critique...), I find it's generally helpful to begin with what the writer has done well. What is good about the poem? After that, I give my observations based on technicalities like unintentional misspellings and clearly incorrect grammar -- in other words, both can be used in poetry, but the poem itself should earn the right. As several of you have pointed out, once the poem is out of the writer's hands, it must do all the talking on its own. The poet can't follow it around saying "But you see, the reason I did/said thus-and-such is because I was going for this-or-that effect." If you have to do that, your poem didn't. Rewrite time.

As I indicated earlier, the attention of a reader is a gift they are paying to our meager work. In a world of internet and Ipods, why should someone bother with the arcana of poetry? We must arrest them with our words. That is the height of the task before us, unless it is fine to be a handful of unread kooks who are doing that which only we ourselves find of value. I am a voracious reader of poetry, and have really only one criterion for a poem: reward my attention.

That's a huge criterion, though. So why turn my attention away from Donald Hall, Carolyn Forche, Sharon Olds, Billy Collins, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Elliott, D.H. Lawrence, E.A. Poe, and the countless other published poets whose work is clearly rewarding to read, and turn to the work of those not yet published? Because I am one of you, and I am asking the same of you, and hoping my work meets the standards I set.

Yet, there is no process I despise more than having my work subjected to "workshopping." (open critique) Here goes.