Maybe the place to start when talking about poetry forums is what is and isn’t working.
So, do you workshop your poetry? Where do you go? Where don’t you go? Why? Why? Why?
If anyone doesn’t want to go public with their places and reasons, send me an email. I’m very interested.
Off the Net, I am currently teaching relative beginners (undergraduates); have an occasional 1-1 workshop with a fellow poet in Sheffield; and a couple of meetings a year with my mentor/supervisor.
I read at pffa, but I find I can’t critique on online workshops at present – the gap between the approach I have to take in running creative writing classes and the harsher rigour of a good online workshop is too great. Since I’m not offering critique, I can’t put work up for comment.
I want to talk poetry and poetics with people whose work I respect. I would like to exchange ideas about the sonnet while referencing Khalvati and Carter, and quoting both. I would like to talk about a poetry fragment I am struggling with and not worry whether the discussion turns to specific recommendations or wider issues.
I’d like the occasional laugh. And the sense of a network. And the possibility of plotting meetings, joint readings and the assassination of key literary figures.
Julie–I moderate at WildPoetry forum http://www.wildpoetryforum.com, so I’m probably biased about the place.
I think it offers a large range of poetic styles and places for relatively light commentary and places for heavier crit.
What I like about Wild is the sense of openness. That may contribute to a less rigorous feel to the place as compared with some of the other IBPC boards, but I’ve survived some of the harsher crit places and prefer a gentler atmosphere.
Not because I can’t take critique–on the contrary, it’s more important for me to know that something doesn’t work for a reader than that it does–but there is a difference between good critique and feeling like you’ve wandered back into the poetry crit version of junior high school.
I learn as much from critiquing others as I do from workshopping my own work and find the online community works for me given my life obligations right now.
Good conversation.
xo
lisa
Jim, see, I don’t even know if what you’re describing is as wonderful as it sounds, since I’ve never experienced it. Well, I’ve plotted to assassinate Nora Roberts. Does that count? 😀 Thanks for the input.
Lisa, I haven’t been to your forum in too long. Of course, I’ve been sullen and anti-poetry, so that’s to your forum’s benefit! 😀 I definitely understand what you mean about the junior high feel of some boards. Thanks so much for adding your three cents (inflation!).
Julie
In fact, I was trying to describe an ideal poetry board – rather than something I currently have access to. What do you think?
I’m a novice (read: elementary school, or possibly junior high), and I really like PFFA. It can be hostile, but I feel like the moderators are fair and knowledgeable. Since I’m working to learn what I can on my own, I feel like it’s a great place for me with its wealth of information.
That said, I do sense the limitations PFFA might pose to the more advanced poet, as you and Nic have discussed. The higher forums seem fairly quiet.
For me, the worst thing about boards is that they encourage poems that really don’t attempt to do or say much of anything.
The cycle of critting and wanting feedback seems to encourage far too many participants to seek out poems they can comprehend quickly (so as not to risk going out on a limb while critting) and post poems that are readily comprehensible (to attract more responses).
Unfortunately, the easiest way to do that is to seek out and post poems that say very little. Look at the first page of poems on just about any board; strip away some competently phrased lines, and what are you left with, really? The likelihood that you’re going to remember anything you’ve read within a day or two is just about zero.
Part of this is that there’s an overemphasis on How, and a discounting of What and Why. If something fits the house style, there are very few in-house voices who will point out that the poem amounts to a pointless rephrasing an old, tired idea, or a stack of competently turned lines about an idea that really wasn’t worth the effort in the first place.
Boards may fuss over cliched phrases, but they all seem to slurp their own versions of cliched ideas and content.
And I’ve seen different manifestations of this basic problem on PFFA, Erato and The Gaz.
“If something fits the house style, there are very few in-house voices who will point out that the poem amounts to a pointless rephrasing an old, tired idea, or a stack of competently turned lines about an idea that really wasn’t worth the effort in the first place.”
Quite honestly, these two points – the tired idea, and a worthless competence – are the very points I would be quick to comment on in a poetry board critique. And I think most competent critics would do the same.
Rob, I have to disagree with you. Pointless competence (which is such a wonderfully concise term for what I’ve seen) is my biggest issue with Erato. I do think that it’s a bigger problem in metrical poetry, since it seems some people think that writing in meter and rhyme is necessary and sufficient.
James, I like your ideas a lot. And I hate that you are unable to participate in forums because of rules that shouldn’t be so restrictive. Good poetry should be encouraged, whether you have time to reciprocate crits or no.
G, I’m delighted you feel like you’re learning and growing poetically. That’s really what matters, isn’t it? Still, the hostility (and as I’ve said before, I contributed early to pffa’s hostile tone) is divisive and tiresome. I don’t want to be screamed at, you know?
anonymous, you’ve really hit on what is probably the biggest issue for me. But as I say that, I realize that it’s not a poetry forum issue, but a poetry issue. Most of what we all write is forgettable. More, not just able to be forgotten, but should be forgotten. (Great, now I have “Dust in the Wind” running through my head!) Allowing someone to post whatever they want encourages poetry-as-commodity. Not allowing them to post simply drives away traffic and creates a constrained and sterile atmosphere in which all spontaneity is sacrificed in the name of fairness. I’d rather have commodities than nothing. Is there a better solution?
Well, I’d argue that you see different manifestations of the problem of pointlessness at different boards, which suggests to me that it has more to do with the general phenomenon of groupthink than anything that specific boards are doing or not doing with their memberships.
And I agree that they’re workshop environments, and that most of the attempts should and will slip into oblivion. Nonetheless, across a number of boards, there seems to be an emphasis on How something is executed (the stuff you can teach, the stuff from which house styles develop) at the expense of What and Why, which you can’t teach, and which expose a much more personal, much less fixable problem (namely, um, you’ve got nothing to say).
For example, every board has at least several friendly, avid posters who write quite poorly and yet never seem to get taken to task for the cumulative problem beneath the surface of their umpteenth poem about Robin At My Windowsill, or Poignant Moment With Uncle Fred: they’re hopelessly bad writers.
The critter’s mantra of focusing on the particular work keeps the poster and the critter safely away from what’s obvious to any visitor to the site, or to anyone familiar with the previous six hundred poems posted by Good Old Whomever: the poem is dull because it’s the product of a dull mind.
Apparently, however tough or gentle a board’s critting style may be, the Don’t Quit Your Day Job level of analysis is considered too brutal. So a politic “this isn’t working” and/or a few in-line suggestions are offered instead, and the good-natured squatter is off to pen next week’s Twilight Makes Me Think of Stuff.
I don’t know what the solution is, really; different boards have tried different approaches, but they all have squatters, just as they all have “wits” who aren’t funny by any non-board standard. Maybe someone could launch an invitation-only board, and attempt to pilfer the better writers from other sites and (gasp) non-web venues, but I wonder how long it would be immune to groupthink. I dunno.
Internet forums always encourage cliquishness and groupthink. It’s not just limited to poetry boards. It’s all the boards. It’s just an inherent limitation in the technology. Personally I’m confident that the latest wave of Web 2.0 stuff will lead to some new innovations in the way we’re communicating. The next decade should be interesting. People will be communicating in new and exciting ways. I’ve never been fond of forums anyway. An unmoderated usenet was better before it crushed under its own weight. And I’m not a fan of moderation at all. You can’t encourage people to speak freely and tell them to shut up at the same time. I’d rather deal with the noise and use filtering technologies to weed through it then function in an enivironment that is subject to any, and I mean any, centralized authority. The beauty of the internet is that it’s free. People can speak their minds freely. Let’s keep it that way. It’s good for democracy. It’s good for Art too.