Dear Sue:


I did pay attention to the comments, but wonder about the sincerity and
motivation especially when a poem is dissected with words and phrases like:
trite, drivel, hackeyed , vagueness, triteness, really horrible,
basically sounds ridiculous, 2nd-grade spittle-drivel

It seems to me that 'the heat' you speak of, is mostly hot air and nothing
to be taken as a serious attempt to offer constructive interchange or
advice.

This particular critique reads like a dramatic rebuttal and confrontation,
as if, there is an agenda.

Critique that holds value, in my opinion, would include less adjectives, be
more direct and be a lot less offensive. Please forgive my bold faced
response, but after forty years of making art, I still haven't managed a
tight grasp of decorum or protocal.

I do appreciate your defense of Carl, but do not appreciate you telling me
to 'get out of the kitchen'.

Best regards,

Deborah Russell

*************************


Deborah, there are many good things here.  You manage to evoke small town
mores and religious ideas. I feel you need to do some drastic cutting,
however.  You are expecting one poem to do way too much.  Remember the poem
is yours.  You can change or not change as you see fit; however, if you just
defend yourself against critical comments, such defense does utterly no good
-- and there is a certain insulting air about telling people they are only
reading on the surface, etc.  Relax.  Listen.  And say thanks and let it go
at that.  It just could be that sometimes others are right.  They certainly
have no motive except to try to help make a good poem even better, and if a
poem does not need criticism, why offer it here?  I hope you take this in
the
spirit in which it is meant.  It is not easy to give good criticism.  I know
that.  And there is an old saying also trite: "If you can't stand the heat,
get out of the kitchen."  Now to get back to your poem, the phrase that Carl
found fault with, the baby talk, should be considered separately from what
your brother did or did not say.  Factual truth often has to be changed to
make that thing we call art.  The question is not whether something did or
did not happen, and the defense of "this is the way it happened" has
practically no validity.  I do like many things about this poem.  I love the
qualities of sound and I also love the atmosphere.  But cutting, tightening,
and looking at this through a reader's eyes will improve it.  Thanks for
listening, Sue



_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail