: Re: What to look for when criticizing poetry? A recent question got me thinking about how to criticize poetry well and I realized I am not very good at it. I can do themes, and that's about

@Holmes449

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+1 SF, emotional impact is important.

But basically the advice is the same: Stay technical. If on first impression, you "don't like" a poem, ask yourself if you weren't intended to like it. To take an extreme fictional example, if the poem is celebrating the assassination of a hated politician, I'm not going to like it. But I can realize I don't like the poem because of its meaning.

To do a proper critique, we must get over that personal emotional reaction to the topic, and critique the technicalities of poem formation intended to create that reaction.

I have not studied poetry, so you may have more examples than I; but I have read rhyming poetry where the rhymes are strained; or the metre is messed up, or words seem forced into the line -- They may be important but they don't fit. The same thing with syllabic elisions (using an apostrophe to replace a voiced letter or eliminate a syllable for the metre or count -- ne'er for "never", am'rous for "amorous", 'tis for "it is"). To me, these can be overdone and seem like crow-barring a word into a poem.

I know there can be patterns emphasis, and patterns of imagery. I know there can be echoes of imagery; e.g. a progression of flower names intended to symbolize various things; purity, virginity, love, death. I know a poem can feel rushed or feel crowded, a result of trying to pack too much story into the wrong form. Poems can be just as much a victim of cliché as novels.

As SF says in their answer, the emotion evoked in the reader is important, but regardless of the emotion, what are the mechanics of evoking it?

Just like when writing a novel, I don't ever want my reader to break their reverie of reading because their attention was drawn to bad writing or mistakes. I want to sustain that flow. I should think in poetry your aim is the same: If the whole point is to manipulate the reader's emotions, then any stray emotions, like irritation at a bumpy ride in the metre or rhyme, is a failure of the poem, because unintended emotion intrudes on their reverie.

That is what you are looking for in critiquing poetry. You want to be led through their their sequence of imagery and emotions and even surprises smoothly, and what you critique is anything that makes the trip not progress smoothly, that seems out of place, that stalls or grates or interrupts the reading. And, where their are opportunities where the author could apply some imagination to make a line or image have a larger impact.

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