A Word about Critique

This week we crank it up -- madcap critique fun. In your written critiques, I expect you to address the major areas we have touched on so far: intention, sound, and meaning. Always seek to answer the following three sets of larger questions:

• What is the poem trying to do? Where is it achieving that intention? Where could it do more to achieve it? Is there a latent intention that could be teased out of the poem?
• How is the poem working on the level of the syllable? word? phrase? line? Does the poem's form fit its function?
• How does the poem communicate -- is it logical/literal (makes sense) or intuitive/figurative (doesn't make sense) or somewhere in between? Where do you need more of one or the other communication style (i.e., more logic or more leaping)? Here focus on metaphors, images, symbols, connotations, allusions...those sorts of things.

Your written critique needs to convey a thorough consideration of these basic elements of the poem. The standard is to make comments on the line-level where appropriate and to provide an end note of a few fairly detailed paragraphs. You can't go wrong taking a paragraph to address each of the three areas above.

Those will be our areas of focus in oral critique as well. Remember, poets, it's your job to make sure we answer any additional concerns/questions you have when we turn it over to you at the tail end of your critique.

REMEMBER TONE. Your word choices matter. "Annoying" is a case in point -- it tends to crop up here and there. I find it particularly annoying. Avoid it and any other word that conveys a similar adversarial tone.

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