Chris Jones wrote:
>
>         Liz has raised an interesting question, for me at least.
>
> I write in a non-formal way and feel an exile from formalism, so you
> will have to forgive me or excuse me as I have to ask rather naive
> questions, as a stranger would be required to do in a strange land. The
> questions are: on what grounds and in what way is it possible to say
> what is considered good poetic language and by obvious implication what
> is not poetic language and hence bad poetry? On what formal grounds is
> good and bad poetry judged or decided? I also need to ask how and why is
> Carol Ann Duffy, because of the formal qualities of her writing, able to
> be placed in a category under the heading of Larkin? What formal
> decisions allow this to happen?
>
> Kate Jennings in _Mother I'm Rooted_ (1975) wrote:
> I don't know any longer what is 'good' and what is 'bad'. I have been
> trained to know, in a patriarchal university, on a diet of male writers.
>
> In the introduction to _The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets_  by
> Susan Hampton and Kate Llewellyn, in the which the above is quoted, a
> very compelling argument is made that formalism and the decisions and
> judgments made using the various formal methods are political. From this
> it can be said that form is political even if claiming to be apolitical
> and in so doing proclaiming it's own dishonesty. So, can formalism ever
> be honest even if it claims to be honest criticism?
>
> Another quote from the above introduction, this time by a male poetry
> critic and editor who has come to question his own formal methods and
> judgments:
> I have begun to think that I might have been quite wrong in many of my
> suggestions, quite blind in my rejection of poems that, because they did
> not conform in sufficient respects to what I had come to believe were
> the fundamentals of good poetry, I thought were poor or inept or somehow
> simply misconceived... if I was doing that, and in some small way
> helping to repress a way of saying that I did not understand or for
> which I could not see the necessity, how many others must have been
> doing likewise, and for how long? (David Brooks, 1985)
>
> I believe the above introductory essay and collection of poems to be
> important not just in an Australian sense but on an international scale.
> I say this not because I am a sensitive male but based on my
> concrete lived experiences and I look to this book as a much needed and
> essential friend. The list of formal tricks Susan and Kate make in this
> introduction which are used to deny women poets the right to speak echo
> my own experiences as a militant gay writer.  How often have I seen
> formal claims of bad writing, usually hostile even if cloaked in a
> defensive form as a defence of poetry (more dishonesty) or rejections or
> even worst calls for others to judge and write on our behalf,  such as
> professors in universities or other writers and which is another way of
> denying the right to speak. Their writing is bad, they need help...
> cringe and cringe again. I feel for the indignity of those who have been
> asked to write and judge as such and hold no bad feelings and admire the
> courage of those who have turned in friendship instead of doing what is
> implicitly expected of them.
>
> I can give an example: _PINK INK, anthology of recent lesbian and gay
> writers in Australia_. This was formally judged as bad writing, even the
> worst of writing, not literature, not worthy of publication. How was
> this book made? By a loose collective of gay men and lesbians who put
> out a call for manuscripts. We met often, read all the material
> submitted and because we could not include all that we received in one
> 300 page volume made selections simply on what resonated instinctively
> in some way, and quite often we did not understand the writing, but it
> went in anyway. We decided the order the writers were to appear in the
> book by writing the names of all the writers on small pieces of paper
> and placing them in a hat and without looking drawing the pieces of
> paper out one by one. That decided the order by chance, not what we
> thought should be assigned the privileged positions in the book. (I
> assume people know about the traditional form of anthologies and how and
> where writers are to be positioned in collections with the first two and
> last entry being the priviledged positions, for example.) It took us
> several years to find a publisher. We were rejected by all the majors,
> except one, who wanted formal changes made to way we edited, which we
> refused to do. Most didn't even want to talk to a collective of dykes
> and fags and replied with snide homophobic remarks about the collective.
> We did eventually find a publisher, Wicked Women Publications,
> publishers of a lesbian S&M magazine.
>
> While I say I write outside form in a non-formal way I still greatly
> admire the ways in which poets have found to work in and break form. I
> cannot do this, given the hostililities and defensiveness of formalism I
> experience. This would be too much to live with and far too much
> sadness. This may be difficult for many to understand. I am amongst the
> last still living of my networks of friends, lovers and ex-lovers who
> have died in horrible ways; murders, suicides, heroin overdoses and the
> slow deaths of HIV/AIDS. I know few in liberal democratic countries like
> Australia have experienced losing so many at such a young age and in
> such circumstances and this I can understand and I can therefore
> understand why it would be diffcult to see why I need to work outside
> form. My questions still stand and are honest questions. Questions from
> a naive stranger.
>
> Perhaps it could be said that there is no poetry without formalism. The
> only way I can think to respond to this is to renounce poetry since I
> cannot recant. To cry out a slogan: down with poetry! All poetry is cliche.
>
> To echo Maurice Blanchot:
> A poem? No. No poetry, never again.
>
> My questions are still the honest questions of a stranger. I do really
> want to know about formalism.
>
> best wishes and many good vibes
>
> Chris Jones.
>
>

You don't "really want to know about formalism," because you put any
potential respondent in an impossible bind: you define any attempt to
maintain standards in poetry as sexist and homophobic.  Belief in a
hierarchy of tastes, that there is better and worse in art, does not of
itself imply either snobbery or elitism.  You may have suffered a lot of
grief, but grief doesn't justify illogic.