07-16-2011, 05:30 PM
I think once you reach a certain level of quality art becomes impossible to measure objectively. You can measure a bad sonnet by whether it conforms to the rules of a sonnet, and you can measure a bad piece of free verse by how elegant the lines are, but when you're faced with two great sonnets or two great pieces of free verse, then the objective results become less clear. I think measuring great poems is useful however in order to determine how you yourself feel about them. Making clear if you prefer a Byron or a Shakespeare sonnet. I don't think everyone's graph should be the same. Importance and Perfection are subjective. As Nabokov said, art is useless to society, but important to the individual.
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe