"Nate and Jane Dorward" <[log in to unmask]> wrote
>Alaric: I think "evaluation" is not a term to be dismissed lightly though I
>can understand your impatience with the word & the way it's used: Mr Pain's
>questions are clearly meant to provoke & annoy so I can see why you'd
>dismiss the topics he broaches.
My comment was clearly meant to provoke but I did not (in my opinion)
dismiss the topic. I think it is a very important consideration. Much
poetry is viewed from the question of whether or not it is 'valid', rather
than from the many other questions one might ask of a poem.
>What's wrong with opinion,
>articulacy, etc.: I would have thought saying why something was valuable to
>you would be an exemplary act.
Saying why something is valuable offers multiple possibilities (see
THINGSNOTWORTHKEEPING).
Addressing a poem to see if it fits within pre-defined criteria of
acceptability of 'canonical status' can be a way of avoiding addressing
what the poem is doing, and protecting oneself from it.
Poems do more than offer themselves for assessment, offer themselves for a
mark out of 100.
If a poem excites me, disturbs me, frightens me, I don't care if it is
'competently written' or whether or not it will be read in 100 years time.
It is not value I dispute (I value many things, but I may not have
evaluated them), but I do question the response to poetry as an evaluative
response.
Sometimes poetry makes me write. To me that is as valuable as poetry that
makes me evaluate it.
Give me an 'incompetent' poem that reconfigures my braincells rather than
one that asks me to place it on the list of 'excellence'.
I thought this was clear from my last, sparse, much more elegant email. But
obviously it failed to get above 50%.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|