Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

From: David Kellogg
Subject: Re: Criteria
Dear Alfred Corn,
Since you single out Keith Tuma as the one person who thought about what he
was writing before lashing out, I’ll assume that I’m one of the dunderheaded
lashers who disappoint (DLWD). Nevertheless, I persist.
For everybody’s sake, I’ll only respond to the part of this post that addressed
me, or that I think were more or less addressed to questions I’ve fielded before.
> On the possibility or impossibility of evaluating poetry: The idea that
> all poems are of equal interest, that no poem is either good or bad, can
> be believed by some people, obviously, but not by most readers.
Yes. And nobody on this list said otherwise, not even maria; when she said that
she agreed with Duncan about there being no good or bad poems that was NOT
a refusal of evaluation, nor was it an "anything-goes" kind of policy.
Certainly nobody has said that all poems are of equal interest. "Interest" is
precisely what is at issue, in the sense that our evaluations of poems are
"interested" (read: contingent) and thus different. I am interested in some
poetry because I like it; I’m interested in other poetry because I don’t. I find
boredom interesting, but boredom is usually thought of as "bad."
> By the same token, if evaluation is as contingent as some of the
> posts say it is, how is LP able to dismiss "mainstream" poetry as dull or
> retrograde or clunky or whatever? Isn’t that an evaluation? If it is, on
> what basis is the dismissal made? What are your standards? When David
> Kellogg cites all the usual criteria that have been applied to the
> evaluation of poetry since Day One, I have to ask him why he doesn’t read