Which is more important?

[tectak]

@True.
Hi! As ever you makes some fine sounding statements and any reasonable person would of course be won over by such intellectually profound sounding arguments. Sadly I’m not reasonable, or even of a sound mind much of the time. So please excuse me whilst on have a little rant on the side here --
I hate PC and I have a particular hatred of pretentious artsy bollocks (Others might like to bandy around the faux poetic tag, but I think there is a lower level that poetry can be reduced too – Perhaps I should have put this reply into the thread on irritating critique). Distressingly, for me, poetry seems to attract a higher than average percentage of individuals who, when they put on a badge saying “Poet” become… (and everyone please note, this is in reference to the subject of the thread and the root of my niggle, rather than a personal attack on any individuals)…but sorry I’m just going to have to say it …Poets - Willy waving, intellectual wannabe’s’ with a God complex. (Worse yet, because of the need to still conform and be PC, the willy waving becomes homogenised, so that it is the same old garbage trotted out time and time again). A few intellectual sounding words, a healthy dose of worthy names casually dropped into the text, a sprinkling of scientific references to obscure or random branches of research and scientific fields and the components for our posing platform are neatly assembled. Having assembled the key components obviously the lines need to be fleshed out with plenty of quotes from the plebs (the effect of the God complex is kicking in around now – the assembly of worshipful subjects needs to know that their god is a listening god who understands them – but that his thoughts are higher than their thoughts of course!); next deliberately misinterpret or twist the quotes so that they can be shoehorned into the standard text. Voila ! We have a perfectly homogenised willy ready to be waved.
And mostly I love it. I adore all the faux bitch fights that bounce back and forth. Some of you people are genuinely comic and near genius in your ability to flash out quick witted replies and poetically phrased, perfect putdowns. Way out of my league, so most of the time I’ll just stand on the sidelines and applause. However, I did have a point I was trying to make behind my rant above. (That was just the intro). I do think that we have a problem in the workshop boards. This is my thorn: the pretentious artsy bollocks is counter productive and distracts from the poetry writing. I think it inhibits any true creativity and encourages the aforementioned willy waving behaviour. How many times do we read the comment that ego has no place in a poetry forum; but this is normally said in response to a complaint against “mature” poets eviscerating a newer poet and said newer poet complaining against the brutality or rudeness of the comments. Down the path we go of telling them to toughen up and grow some thicker skin. True enough, I would mostly agree that only brutal honesty and openness to receive this type of critique will open the door to poetic advancement. (No pain, no gain and all that good stuff). But we are fooling ourselves if we think that some of the crap that is spouted on this site in the name of honest critique is not birthed out of the most humongous egos I have ever seen. (Bearing in mind that I have largely lived surrounded by business tycoons, bankers, lawyers, scientists, high ranking military men and last but not least new money….old money is mostly couth and has more grace! I think I am qualified to say I know an ego when I see one). Sorry, I know I have gone off topic, but the nuts and bolts of what I am getting at is in there somewhere.

True –Really this is really your honest thought process in response to the thread question and subsequent comments?! “Poetry… its mimesis is always a rearrangement, at a molecular level, of that axis between the "seen" and the "felt" /that axis which connects the childish eye to the Socratic heart/, which, were it not for poetry, with its misguided Method of elenchus, would remain obscured…."

Here is a side question:- Do you need to be an egotistical, willy waving, intellectual wannabe with a god complex to be a good poet?

Meanwhile back at your answer True…
There were a couple of salient points in your reply that made some sense.
Basically I would agree with the following:-
• - the edit, fuzzy or not, may be the truer account of the authors experience (for all we know).
• Prose might be a better framework in which to record a factual event.
• In a workshop, we can only critique the words and their arrangement, tone, sound, form, voice, etc. We are in no position to critique the experience of the author, or their /feelings/, perspectives, points of view, etc...we have no idea where they are coming from.
I was struggling to decipher the rest of the points you made, due to the heavy application of assertive statements of the truth according to True. (Please note that I refrained from calling your reply artsy bollocks – I have no idea what experiences you might have had that would lead you to utter such things and indeed I have no idea where you are coming from)
I think you made the following comments, but please do correct me if I have twisted your meaning. I was struggling to make much sense or meaning from what was written, (so I made my own truth up and assembled my words around this, so that, if this text is ever critiqued I can always hide behind the protection of:- the art of the construction of these words is only to be ascertained in the eye and the interpretation of the reader).
• You think that those who wish to write poetry based around capturing true observations and conveying some level of emotional experience are wrong in this desire because good poetry does not require this and it is not even a common element / component of good poetry. So therefore anyone who writes with this as their starting point is by your definition – not a good poet.
• Factual knowledge and information has no place in poetry (it is better contained on film and in hard drives).
• Poetry creates it’s own truth and does not need to conform to even the basics of comprehensive accessibility, because this is down to the skill of the reader (who by unspoken definition, to be any good, has to be able to interpret what the poet was conveying with no logical markers to guide them or alternately gets to make up their own version of reality from the list of assembled words)


I think we need we need “both kinds, Sugar…country and western”! I don’t think we should have just experience based life poetry, or equally poetically perfect lines of words that are inaccessible to any but those who attain a higher light of revelation, I want “four whole fried chickens”. Chuck it in a bucket and put a fried egg on top and don’t step in my bucket. Haute cuisine is overrated. Two day old curry refried is far better. I know there are differing levels of ability to both write and read poetry, but the poetry has to be grounded at some level in an accessible level, otherwise it might as well be written in Klingon.
(If the answer [to the side question] is yes, then I need to go off and form the “unborn poets society” because I have failed at the first hurdle. I want to write poetry, but I am a life long subscriber to being a reject and a failure and general all round, society misfit and actually I’m quite happy in that position because I don’t want to fit in. – I hate PC, media manipulation and spin makes me mad – in particular I think global warming is a load of claptrap, I’m a dissenter of the first order, I don’t want to be in fashion and in step. I don’t feel the need to be an intellectual. I’m hopeless at remembering anything – including names and useless trivia and facts. In short, I’ve had a look at mainstream and decided it is vastly overrated and not for me and willy waving competitions are not as interesting as poetry).
I must now apologise because I am doing a fire and forget post here as I will be offsite for a week. So good news True, you get to have the last say and have time to think up a really good putdown, as by the time I am back the discussion will have moved on. So you win. Enjoy! I will sit here in my wrongness happily enough. (Being a winner smells too much like fitting in the box for my tastes). Alternatively, I lied and when I get back (if I have not been shunned), perhaps I will get a grip and a life and join in the fun by starting a thread entitled “cod piece of the week”.

I used to like reading and writing, but the bastards made me a mod.
Now I have no time for either, I'm too busy pretending I'm god.
Amen,
tectak