Better Critiques

[wasellajam]

Yeah I think all the norms here are badly in need of updating, frankly. 

As Busker notes, it's clear there is no meaningful distinction between "Basic" and "Mild to Moderate" at this point. I can't speak to whether there was in the last, but those categories are doing literally nothing in current praxis. I kind of flip a coin as to which to post in. 

Also the default seems to be in-line notes with little or no broader discussion. Also some people will just be like "cut this" or "add more here" without offering any explanation. This is mostly not very helpful. 

IMO, the best crit involves:
-what worked and didn't, and where possible, why
-a loose prosaic reading of the poem's apparent intentions (subject/occasion/conceit)
-discussion of the poems relationship to the poetic tradition (if possible)
-thoughts on the relationship between content and form 

As Todd says what's really most valuable is understanding, at a granular level, which lines people respond to and which are forgettable or distracting. I don't need your suggestions about how to fix it nearly as much as I need to know what, to your eye and ear, needs fixed. I'm sure many of us feel the same way.

I think I sometimes forget to add a summary of what the poems to me, a conclusion. Thanks for that reminder.

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I used to do a lot of intensive critiques, but over time I felt it was probably too much, a lot of it subjective. I was worried that I was giving them the equivalent of a line reading in acting.

I also started to notice the things that actually mattered when I received critique were just knowing what was hitting, what wasn’t hitting. Mostly, I was paying attention to the lines no one commented on, because if they were just transitional filler, I wanted to fix them.

So it affected how I think about critique. I’m not even sure what method I’d use these days to approach poems with the goal of being helpful to the writer.

Hi, Todd! I think you’re on the money here. When I looked back on critiques I received, while the nits helped the final poem the most important comments were how something in the poem made each reader feel, how it left them.