The following is a series of message board entries on the topics of criticism. This page is subject to addition and revision with new information.

Message 1473:
General Criticism
AngelPie_Mouse
08/27/1999 08:52 pm EDT

General Criticism: Know Your Audience

Illustration: a few years ago, an American comedian got the opportunity to play a rather prestigous engagement in London. In the habit of using the monologue form of comedy, he told a rather long story about baseball, one he had told many times before to US audiences with good results. The story was filled with places where the audience usually snickers at the entendre or he had to pause for longer full out bouts of laughter. The whole usually filling about thirty minutes. On the night of his performance in London, however, he finished the entire monologue in less than fifteen minutes. No one laughed; no one snickered. Of politeness, however, they applauded when he finished. The next night, he tried it again with the same result. He was stunned. What is wrong with these British audiences, he asked. It genuinely upset him a great deal because he knew this material was good.

The night of his second performance, after it was over, a stagehand tapped on his door. After apologizing for disturbing him, the man said: "You know, I've been to America and seen your baseball and know the stories you are telling are funny. But we don't play baseball here. Did you ever think about changing the context to cricket?"

He spent the next two days emmersing himself in an understanding of the game cricket. And, indeed, much of his baseball story worked in the context of the other game, professional sports being what they are. The next performance, he used the revised monologue instead and the results were very much as if he had been telling the story of baseball to a US audience, everyone laughed.

The morale of this story is "know your audience." If you are writing solely to please yourself, there is a good chance that is the only audience you will please. While the impulse of the poet is to create for his own ear, to create for expression of self and not to entertain others, still by putting those words to paper, by presenting them to others, he is in effect submitting the work to an audience. How significant the work is usually determined by how broad the audience to which the work appeals. I do not mean the number of people who are exposed to the piece, but the number of people who having been exposed understand and appreciate the work, respond to it. This notion is not to suggest that you write to the lowest common denominator of understanding, simply that in choosing words, images, and ideas to convey be aware of who you want to speak to, e.g.: "people just like me (the poet)," "people of a more general background," or no one.

Message 1475:
Criticism
AngelPie_Mouse
08/28/1999 03:55 am EDT

How to Take Criticism

Point One: Be Objective.
Every poet will tell you that writing a poem is a very personal process of exploring yourself, your thoughts and feelings whether the product is about you or about something outside yourself. You bring this examination forward into words, phrases, lines, verses, and when you are ready to present this to the world or to someone else, you usually have a very good idea that this work, this endeavor is as perfect as you can make it. It is a poem.

Given all of the above, it is natural to feel a bit defensive when someone reads it and doesn't seem to understand or appreciate what has gone into the work. And it is sometimes difficult to overcome the sense that you personally are being attacked in their criticism. However, that is precisely what you must do. You must receive criticism with as much objectivity as you hope they employed in offering it.

Point Two: Consider the source of the criticism.
Not all critics are created equal. Some people consider a pat on the back in encouragement all the criticism they are qualified to give. Others will feel compelled to study the piece, to pick it apart for defects, sometimes forgetting to point out areas where none exist. The questions you need to ask yourself are:

1. Does it seem as if the person actually understood the poem? If no, is the fault in the poem or in reader?
2. Are the observations of this person usually valid?
3. Does the observation seem to be more a matter of self-gratification on the part of the critic or is it genuinely offered?

Point Three: Take it for what it's worth.
Criticism is like free advice, which we know is worth every penny you paid for it. Some of it may seem as self-evident as an old folk saying although such truisms didn't gain that status without having some validity. Some may seem more painstakingly detailed than the poem itself. It isn't necessary that you knee-jerk to what people tell you is wrong in a piece, but don't dismiss it out of hand.

Point Four: Right church, wrong pew.
When someone offers remedies to a defect, consider that they may have spotted the area in the poem which is in trouble, but not necessarily isolated the cure for it. It will be ultimately up to you to experiment with what they are suggesting or explore other possibilities.

Point Five: Is the criticism specific to this piece?
Sometimes we can fall into bad habits of "throwing away" the ending of a piece, that is: just stopping without really coming to a resolve; or the reverse, going on and on when the ending was four stanzas ago. We gloss (or under explain), we are redundant (going over and over an idea without going anywhere with it). Sometimes we overwrite a thing to get to a rhyme, destroy our own meter, over use a word without thinking about it or what it means (semantics can come back to bite you). We just plain get lazy about the editing process. Writing should be 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration.

When we fall into these bad habits, they may extend over several pieces, not just the one currently under consideration. Be willing to look over old work to see if you are developing bad work habits.

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