Poetry Editors?

[29wordsforsnow]

What I really wondered about is the fact that the Volunteer Editors Program includes all the story categories, but not Poetry. Would be nice to find people interested in reviewing poems.

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[Senna Jawa]

What I really wondered about is the fact that the Volunteer Editors Program includes all the story categories, but not Poetry. Would be nice to find people interested in reviewing poems.

29*

Editing prose tends to be a simple operation which results in an improved story.

Similar editing of a poorly written poem, if possible at all, amounts to writing a new poem with a new author -- the editor would become the author. Thus editing a poor poem by an editor doesn't really exist, there can be only a lesson.

If a poem is pretty good to start with then it is a different story. A few well-placed comments can do a lot of good while the improved piece would still be recognized as the original one and just modified.

In the case of a need for more extensive or significant changes, we can only have advice but the author still has to go back to the piece and redo it themselves.

=========

In the case of prose, the value of the quality of a story is perhaps about 10% and never exceeds 50% of the piece as such.

In the case of a poem, the value of the quality of language is perhaps about 90% of the value of the piece as such. Thus the contribution of an editor's effort in the case of a poorly written poem would be about 90% (could be less, could be more) of the value of a piece as such. That would be nonsense.

 

[29wordsforsnow]

Thanks, Senna, for the precious insight, I underestimated what 'editor' implies. I guess, I'm looking for an auditor, not an editor. Someone who gives pointers to lines which need more attention or simply states 'Try again'. I wouldn't want to burden someone else with the work, but would like see my words on the 'paper'.

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[UnderYourSpell]

If you post and specifically ask for critique you'll get it, then it's up to you whether you take it onboard or not, but different poets will see it different ways. There did used to be a critique thread, but I think somebody threw a hissy fit when not understanding the critique is not criticism, there was some name calling which made people wary of doing it at all.

 

[Piscator]

Re: hissy fits -Back when I was writing scientific paper, my thesis supervisor advised that the best reaction to a negative review is to put it in the drawer for a few days and then come back to it. In some cases the reviewer is an idiot but in most cases you've failed to communicate.

 

[Senna Jawa]

editing, discussions, refereeing.

[...] negative review [...]

Editors are supposed to help. Referees of scientific papers are supposed to accept or reject manuscripts based on the answers to the following questions:

1. (optional but common) are the results and proofs correct? (if not, can they be fixed?)
2. is the paper original (or sufficiently original)?
3. is the paper interesting?
4. does the paper raises up to the given journal's level? (if not then the author(s) might be advised to send their manuscript to a less advanced journal)

There is much more to this story, especially these days.

The patent office answers similar questions when it decides about the invention applications.

We see that a group discussion under a poem is neither editing nor a decision process; also, often, such a discussion may very usefully go quite a bit beyond the poem itself, to benefit the authors and the whole group.

 

[Senna Jawa]

An example, one of a zillion.

There is much more to this story, especially these days.

The patent office answers similar questions [...]

In the early 1990s I worked at a large scientific division of a still much larger high-tech company (in Texas). Higher management sent us a confident guy to encourage and assist us with the patenting activity. A large meeting was called, everybody attended it. Everybody listened attentively like in a church when the end of the world is announced.

The guy and his legal company simply tried to make a buck on us. This guy (I am sure!) was not even a lawyer, he was a blatant BSer. After he was done, I got up and told my colleagues that the patent law is a part of the US constitution, and I followed a point after a point about what the patent law is about. Nobody (but one my friend) was happy -- my life story, a part of CHAOS (but my friend was very happy and amused).

As funny as this may sound, you may smell the familiar corruption and dishonesty.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I was the reviewer thought not the hissy fit thrower, but I haven't critiqued since, seeing as my qualification and right to do so were thrown in my face in a particularly nasty manner and I vowed to stay away from setting myself up for any more abuse.

 

[29wordsforsnow]

I agree that public discussion of a 'raw' work might lead to a heated argument quite fast, instead of making a point how one could improve that piece of work. That was my initial interest, to find people that enjoy to give a personal feedback about what could be improved further.

Thanks for this small discussion.
29*

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Ok somewhere in the depths of this forum is such a thread for critiquing poetry, but if you are indeed serious about needing another I will be more than happy to start one and we can go from there. The member who derailed a different thread, (a challenge I believe) did not wish to receive critique and saw it only as criticism. We do have poets on here that are better than I at critique (butters, Angeline, Champagne, Tzara to name but a few) so as I said before we can try it again as long as we have participants.
Let me know what you think.

 

[Tzara]

<pedantic_soliloquy><!--OK, I've been reading philosophy again. Feel free to ignore the following.-->

One of the problems that someone tasked with being a "poetry editor" encounters is simply trying to figure out what the poet is trying to do. For example, take these five poems:

(Untitled)
Bashō

In my new robe
this morning—
someone else.

Source: On Love and Barley: Haiku of Bashō (tr. Lucien Stryk, 1985)


Interview
Dorothy Parker

The ladies men admire, I’ve heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They’d rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints . . .
So far, I’ve had no complaints.

Source: The Portable Dorothy Parker (2006)


Personal
Beth Gylys

I want a man whose body makes mine hum,
who when he looks my way the sky goes hazy.
Don't call me if you're boring, crude or dumb.

Discussions about sports teams turn me numb,
and men who can't stop talking drive me crazy.
I want a man whose body makes mine hum,

who sweetly cries my name out as we come,
a sensual man, whose touch makes me feel dizzy.
Don't call me if you're angry, cheap or dumb.

I like full lips, bare skin, long winter nights, some
good red wine. I like to spend a lazy
morning with a man who makes me hum.

I like to wade in fountains just for fun,
to decorate my hairband with a daisy,
skinny-dipping, hopscotch, playing dumb.

I love good jazz, dancing till I'm numb,
deep snow, strong wind, a girl dressed up in paisley.
I want a man whose body makes mine hum.
Don't call me if you're rigid, mean or dumb.

Source: Bodies that Hum (1999)


The Sisters of Sexual Treasure
Sharon Olds

As soon as my sister and I got out of our
mother's house, all we wanted to
do was fuck, obliterate
her tiny sparrow body and narrow
grasshopper legs. The men's bodies
were like our father's body! The massive
hocks, flanks, thighs, elegant
knees, long tapered calves–
we could have him there, the steep forbidden
buttocks, backs of the knees, the cock
in our mouth, ah the cock in our mouth.
.............................Like explorers who
discover a lost city, we went
nuts with joy, undressed the men
slowly and carefully, as if
uncovering buried artifacts that
proved our theory of the lost culture:
that if Mother said it wasn't there,
it was there.

Source: Satan Says (1980)


A Story About the Body
Robert Hass

The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she mused and considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you that I have had a double mastectomy," and when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity–like music–withered quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, "I'm sorry I don't think I could." He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl–she must have swept the corners of her studio–was full of dead bees.

Source: Human Wishes (1989)​

These poems differ greatly in terms of style, focus, intended effect, and so on, and that's even with my picking poems that all have some kind of connection to eroticism. (I suppose one might argue that the Bashō poem does not, but that isn't my interpretation.) You shouldn't expect someone to be able to comment on these poems using a single set of criteria. (Yes, I know that's an arguable point, but at least at some level I think a valid one.)

So. It would probably be helpful to someone attempting to comment on one of your poems to be given some idea of what you're looking for in terms of help. If you're trying to write a formal poem, you might want some help in checking the meter or rhyme scheme. More generally, you might be concerned about your use of imagery—are the images vivid enough? Do they avoid cliché? Do they make sense in the context of the poem? You might want to ask about your use of poetic devices like alliteration (too much?), assonance (ditto), rhyme (end-rhyme, internal rhyme, half-rhyme, sight rhyme, etc.), metaphor/simile, synecdoche, metonymy, and all the various other linguistic folderol you might be messing around with.

The person or persons you envision as your intended audience is hugely important. A poem you hope to publish in The New Yorker (or The Atlantic, Poetry, The Missouri Review, and so on) will invite very different criticism from one you're writing to your Significant Other as a Valentine's Day surprise.

In any case, don't put too much faith in any one person's comments. There are no ordained Rules of Poetry chiseled into stone tablets sequestered in a basement vault in the British Museum. The main thing is to express yourself as best you can and enjoy doing it.

</pedantic_soliloquy>

 

[Piscator]

re:

<pedantic_soliloquy><!--OK, I've been reading philosophy again. Feel free to ignore the following.-->

The person or persons you envision as your intended audience is hugely important. A poem you hope to publish in The New Yorker (or The Atlantic, Poetry, The Missouri Review, and so on) will invite very different criticism from one you're writing to your Significant Other as a Valentine's Day surprise.

</pedantic_soliloquy>

Great stuff I loved it all. But I suspect unless you are already a"published" poet your chance of acceptance in in all but the later are slim and even that may depend on whether he/she/they prefer flowers and chocolate to verbiage.

 

[butters]

Tzara, thanks for the new-to-me word of synedoche. I understood the concept once I read the definition but had never heard it called that before kudos!

 

[butters]

29wordsforsnow: what is the nature of the feedback you are looking for?

general observations?
in-depth?
alternate suggestions?

 

[29wordsforsnow]

29wordsforsnow: what is the nature of the feedback you are looking for?

general observations?
in-depth?
alternate suggestions?

I would be happy about general observations and maybe some pointers parts which I should reconsider. I don't want to load off the work to someone else.

Thanks for the discussion so far,
29*

 

[UnderYourSpell]

29wordsforsnow may I put your poem in the new critique thread?

 

[29wordsforsnow]

29wordsforsnow may I put your poem in the new critique thread?

Thank you, UnderYourSpell, that would be very kind.
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P.S.: A comment to the formatting I've chosen: I know it's very uncommon, and maybe against etiquette and tradition. I was looking for something like stage directions in theater plays or tempo markings in music compositions, but without disturbing the text with additional annotations. As capitalized words e.g. in chats are considered as shouting, I tried to use that concept here as well: shout, said loud, whispered, or just mouthed (the last 'what if' in grey). Modernist might have chosen emoticons, but I don't think they would go well with reflective mood I like to set.