Stuart said "Does this admittedly sad level of knowledge on my part, or on the part of other equally sad individuals, negatively affect the poem? For me, it does, because every time I see something that strikes me as clearly wrong, it undermines my confidence in the writer, and I wonder how many other mistakes there are in a given text that I don't recognise through lack of knowledge on my part." I'd take this a little further and question who the writer is writing for. As my reading progresses I am finding that most contemporary poetry is as referential as contemporay art. I can pick the references in the latter, but not the former. So to me at least it seems that currently both artists and poets are making works for their peers who are equally knowledgeable in the media and its proponents rather than for a general audience. They used to aim to please the patron or the church, now they aim to please each other as its their peers who sit the grants boards. The two main artistic measures for the general public in regards to art are whether the subject is well represented (if its representational) or whether the colours match the curtains (if its abstract) and they tend to just walk past anything else completely baffled. What is the equivalent in poetry? Josephine (busy with sonnets still)