Do not be cross with poetry

[ellajam]

We all address all sorts of things in addition to meaning when we critique. A poem has got to do something, mean something or evoke something or be enjoyable to say. Maybe it's from a point of view I find imteresting, maybe I just like the way the words slide around. To make me want to spend time with it it has to appeal to some reason I am reading poetry. It's fine for that "something" to be different for individual readers and writers and poems.

Somethimes a poem does it all for me, those are the ones I remember. But if a poem does any of those things they can be mentioned in a critique and if it is lacking in any that can be pointed out.

While I don't think of poems like a crossword puzzle, though I might be convinced to, I do think of them as a jigsaw, when the pieces go together seamlessly a whole emerges.

I expect a poem to be more, more than the sum of its parts. I'm not cross with a poem that is difficult to get a hold of but I am easily bored by a piece when nothing about it excites or invites me. It's subjective.

But any poem can be critiqued by anyone if they just guide the poet through their individual read. That's one reason that crit that claims the posters above them have said it all feels like bullshit to me. Each read is its own.