Post
by Maureen K Clifford » Tue Jan 26, 2016 3:41 pm
I read with interest Shelley's statement about a judge/forum member making a comment but then not following it up with an example. Too often people post poetry and family and friends come in and say all the nice things - you all know what I mean, when in truth the poem is probably bloody terrible . This then gives false expectations of their work with little real 'meat' to work on to improve.
Recently I made a fairly straight to the point remark re this, to a poet who submitted work to me, along with as much encouragement as I could muster for the submitted work, and then afterwards felt horrible, thinking I had been too hard. Lo and behold I was surprised and delighted to get this reply.
I really felt honoured to read your mail and I really mean it. I would like to thank you for being patient enough to analyse my work which hardly anybody bothered to do so far. Trust me, I respect and value the points put forth and I find them extremely fair. Especially, the poems I wrote during my school days which had the usage of archaic words. I wrote them as a part of my English assignment and I was more focussed to include the words which I was not used to. Later, as years passed by, I understood that the beauty of a poem doesn't lie in its complexity, but how simply it gets immersed in the reader's mind. I always encountered 'likes' and 'comments' cheering my work. What I missed was a response like your yours, which when adhered, I can definitely improve.
So perhaps we shouldn't second guess ourselves but go with our 'gut' as people have suggested here - after all I think most of us on this site are well aware what is good and what is mediocre because we are poets. Horses for courses, I wouldn't take the advice of a baker on a plumbing issue so why take the advice of well meaning friends and family on your poetry.