To 😍 or not to 😍

[Angeline]

I'm having an emoji crisis and I've decided to call a moratorium on them for poems. For me.

Why? I feel like my reasons for hitting Like or Love are mixed. It might be because I like or love the poem, but it also might be because I like the writer or I'm having a great day and feeling generous. Who knows? In short, I don't trust my motives and that makes me uncomfortable. Before the emoji options were available we had comments. If we wanted to express our feelings about a poem we commented or gave feedback. I want to get back to that.

Again this is just my choice. I still love that everyone is here, participating. I love that lurkers turn into posters and new users join in and write. Obviously that has kept me here a long time. And I understand that lots of people find the emojis convenient, a quick easy way to express their appreciation. So y'all do you and I'ma do me. And leave you with a .



Feel free to comment, share, ignore, ridicule as you see fit!

 

[42BelowsBack]

Why? I feel like my reasons for hitting Like or Love are mixed. It might be because I like or love the poem, but it also might be because I like the writer or I'm having a great day and feeling generous. Who knows? In short, I don't trust my motives and that makes me uncomfortable.

EXACTLY.

Other problems (mine) with emoji’s include, they retard communication like actual feedback.

MwahaahaaMwhaahaa Don't shoot!

My First World emoji Problems continue: I also dislike the limited range of emoji’s Lit currently provides. A couple more to broaden the pallet please.

How about one of these I would love a flying fist or a and Feedback worthy.

Somedays, I feel like recommending the following emoji remedies: Smith & Wesson M&P Shield EZ, the Glock 19, and the Sig Sauer P365. All suitable for smaller non emoji loving hands.

(And I uncool admit to liking receiving emoji’s).


THE BIG question: Which is worse, not receiving an emoji or receiving a misleading emoji?

 

[Angeline]

EXACTLY.

Other problems (mine) with emoji’s include, they retard communication like actual feedback.

MwahaahaaMwhaahaa Don't shoot!

My First World emoji Problems continue: I also dislike the limited range of emoji’s Lit currently provides. A couple more to broaden the pallet please.

How about one of these I would love a flying fist or a and Feedback worthy.

Somedays, I feel like recommending the following emoji remedies: Smith & Wesson M&P Shield EZ, the Glock 19, and the Sig Sauer P365. All suitable for smaller non emoji loving hands.

(And I uncool admit to liking receiving emoji’s).


THE BIG question: Which is worse, not receiving an emoji or receiving a misleading emoji?

Most Lit problems are first-world problems.

I want to get back to actual feedback. There are problems though, the main ones being that most people (in my experience here) either don't want it, only want praise, or won't reciprocate. Some poets here are wonderful with commenting constructively. Butters gives excellent feedback as does Tzara. Both of them make comments that are specific and clarify that it's just what they think.

We've had workshop threads over the years but they usually die on the vine for lack of interest. I wouldn't mind doing a challenge where we can rework old poems (and get feedback) to improve them but I doubt it would generate much interest.

I lol'd at your alternate emojis. I once went to a training workshop for my job where we couldn't comment negatively but were encouraged to throw Nerf balls instead. All I could think was can't we just use our fists?

 

[42BelowsBack]

Most Lit problems are first-world problems.

I want to get back to actual feedback. There are problems though, the main ones being that most people (in my experience here) either don't want it, only want praise, or won't reciprocate. Some poets here are wonderful with commenting constructively. Butters gives excellent feedback as does Tzara. Both of them make comments that are specific and clarify that it's just what they think.

We've had workshop threads over the years but they usually die on the vine for lack of interest. I wouldn't mind doing a challenge where we can rework old poems (and get feedback) to improve them but I doubt it would generate much interest.

I lol'd at your alternate emojis. I once went to a training workshop for my job where we couldn't comment negatively but were encouraged to throw Nerf balls instead. All I could think was can't we just use our fists?

I understand and accept what you are signaling and why. Still I want to emoji your reply

I am into real exchange of ideas. Readers often see what we don’t.

So. Well. Anyone interested in being in a mini Lit poetry workshop? Next year. Recommend limit to 4-6 spaces. Ideally three to four Nerf balls welcome.

1) Everyone write a poem focusing on a particular aspect of the craft. ✍
(1.1) Write a poem: no ing word’s / adjectives / adverbs.
(1.2) Write a metaphor, simile free poem: describe an inanimate object that describes the narrator.
(1.3) Using an agreed to short story template, write a poem.
(1.4) Combine (1.1), (1.2), & (1.3) to write your poem for final feedback.

2) Give feedback on each others’ poems.
(2.1) Have fun ignoring feedback.
(2.2) Have fun rewriting poem with feedback in mind.
3) Post your pre feedback poems on Lit and after feedback poems (or not).
(3.1) OR: For the super stars, submit to a non Lit dedicated poetry publication / site for rejection.
(3.2) You could submit to the New Yorker. Nothing ventured…nothing lost.

4) Start your own chap book on sub-stack etc

Many have been published in reputable publications. Learning to write through rejection is the journey.

 

[Angeline]

Ok I'll do it!

I do however have questions. Are 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 separate poems that we then combine in 1.4? I'm not sure if that would work for me, mainly the 1.4 part. Maybe the parameters can be negotiable. (See? I'm not completely opposed to emojis: I just don't want to use them to evaluate poems anymore.)

I like that 2.1 and 2.2 offer choice. But do I have to have fun? Maybe I want to agonize over revising. Lol.

I've already been rejected by New Yorker (ignored actually to be more precise) and many other fine publications.

I think your Substack idea is brilliant.

 

[42BelowsBack]

I forgot.

(4.1) No asking questions. lol
(4.2) ignore 4.1
(4.3) The usual as close as you get rule applies. The poem always takes precedence.

So. Yes. Separate poems that you drawn ‘elements’ from to write a poem.

While I’m going on about it. No matter how hard we try. Feedback actually works in reverse. When we give feedback, it’s a self commentary on what we can see, what we like, where we are in our personal understanding etc. But no one will ever tell you that. So agonize awayyyy…

 

[Ash999]

I'm having an emoji crisis and I've decided to call a moratorium on them for poems. For me.

Why? I feel like my reasons for hitting Like or Love are mixed. It might be because I like or love the poem, but it also might be because I like the writer or I'm having a great day and feeling generous. Who knows? In short, I don't trust my motives and that makes me uncomfortable. Before the emoji options were available we had comments. If we wanted to express our feelings about a poem we commented or gave feedback. I want to get back to that.

Again this is just my choice. I still love that everyone is here, participating. I love that lurkers turn into posters and new users join in and write. Obviously that has kept me here a long time. And I understand that lots of people find the emojis convenient, a quick easy way to express their appreciation. So y'all do you and I'ma do me. And leave you with a .



Feel free to comment, share, ignore, ridicule as you see fit!

Angie,
I am an emotional beast and my feelings towards the Poet override my objective views/perspective about his/her's poetry.....so yes my emojis will and does deduct from honest feedback in my specific case but as you have put it : U do U and I will do me!!!?

 

[Angeline]

Angie,
I am an emotional beast and my feelings towards the Poet override my objective views/perspective about his/her's poetry.....so yes my emojis will and does deduct from honest feedback in my specific case but as you have put it : U do U and I will do me!!!?

Of course! I like who you are Ash and my feelings about emojis pertain to me using them to rate poems, not anyone else. The only reason I even started a thread about it was that I didn't want anyone to think it reflected on them or what they write. For me the only "emoji" alternative would be to give a to everyone because I do love that people post their poems here. I love that this weird little forum gives me a space to connect with others who are drawn to express themselves with poetry. But of course I don't actually love every poem I read here, including my own lol, so I figure if a poem really gets to me I'll comment on it.

 

[Ash999]

Of course! I like who you are Ash and my feelings about emojis pertain to me using them to rate poems, not anyone else. The only reason I even started a thread about it was that I didn't want anyone to think it reflected on them or what they write. For me the only "emoji" alternative would be to give a to everyone because I do love that people post their poems here. I love that this weird little forum gives me a space to connect with others who are drawn to express themselves with poetry. But of course I don't actually love every poem I read here, including my own lol, so I figure if a poem really gets to me I'll comment on it.

Luv U too , Angie!!!

 

[SpermFactory]

Awww get a room already Yah gotta love poets

I LOVE EMOJI’S

 

[Tzara]

I'm having an emoji crisis and I've decided to call a moratorium on them for poems. For me.

Why? I feel like my reasons for hitting Like or Love are mixed. It might be because I like or love the poem, but it also might be because I like the writer or I'm having a great day and feeling generous. Who knows? In short, I don't trust my motives and that makes me uncomfortable.

I agree with this. I have been/am rather erratic in marking poems with "like" or "love" or, more frequently (especially lately), nothing at all. The emojis are slightly better than the 1-5 voting scale on poems submitted to Lit proper (where anything other than a five is often considered something of an insult), but not much.

Again this is just my choice. I still love that everyone is here, participating. I love that lurkers turn into posters and new users join in and write. Obviously that has kept me here a long time. And I understand that lots of people find the emojis convenient, a quick easy way to express their appreciation.

Emojis are certainly an easier response than a comment, even a rather routine comment such as "I liked this" or "good poem," let alone something more substantive.

The problem is that actual comments would almost certainly be rarer than dropping an emoiji on a poem, both because they are at least marginally more work and also because it's likely a reader would have to have stronger feelings about a poem before composing a comment rather than the simple click to indicate one "liked" the poem. So even less frequent reader feedback for a poster, even if more valuable when it does happen. And I suspect that one of the big reasons people drop off the site is because they feel ignored—that noone comments on or even "likes" their offerings.

So I think the emojis have some significant value just in letting people know their poems are being read and liked enough that someone bothered at least to indicate they read the poem with a "like." So I feel guilty at times that I rarely drop emojis on poems, despite the doubts about their use that I described above.

I want to get back to actual feedback. There are problems though, the main ones being that most people (in my experience here) either don't want it, only want praise, or won't reciprocate.

Those are all valid issues with comments, especially the one about only wanting praise. One often sees that phrased something like "Comments wanted, constructive criticism only" which seems usually to translate to "tell me how much you liked my poem." The workshops I've been in usually had some kind of rule that comments should not be mainly about what one liked in the poem but rather focus on areas that seemed to be problematic. This can be (understandably) distressing to the poet, but the point of workshop is to try and improve the poem or point out areas where the reader found the exposition unclear or inapt. One needs to remember that it is the poem that is being criticized, not the poet. Still, it can be uncomfortable—in my program I suspect some of the people who dropped out did so because of how upsetting the workshops could be.

But I think my own biggest problem with commenting on poems is that it is a lot of work, and work that is often ignored or unappreciated by the person asking for comment. The person asking for comment can make this much, much easier by indicating (as specifically as possible) what they want the comments to focus on, e.g. "does the metaphor in line 8 work in the context of the poem?" or "is the imagery consistent or does it conflict with itself" or something like that. Given that we all bring our own way of thinking about poems to criticism, focus helps the commentator avoid "rewriting the poem the way they would have written it."

It's why I think critical commentary is more difficult than writing one's own poems. But it's also why it can be extremely valuable—by giving the poet another's view of the poem's exposition.

 

[Angeline]

Tzara my dear friend, I was going to your comment because I do love it, but it seemed inappropriate given my previous bitching lol.

But yes my issue with leaving comments is that they do take time. I have to read carefully and think through what to say and how to say it in a way that will be helpful but not seen as criticizing. If I have anything of substance to say it won't just be wow I really like that, but will likely include what I think isn't working. And most people will either ignore it entirely or, at best, say thanks that really helped. Frankly I'd rather put that time into my own writing. Or y'know live my life.


Oh and your vampire poem is sublime and brutal.

 

[Tzara]

But yes my issue with leaving comments is that they do take time. I have to read carefully and think through what to say and how to say it in a way that will be helpful but not seen as criticizing. If I have anything of substance to say it won't just be wow I really like that, but will likely include what I think isn't working. And most people will either ignore it entirely or, at best, say thanks that really helped. Frankly I'd rather put that time into my own writing. Or y'know live my life.

The problem for me is that most people here tend to mix up the two meanings of criticize:

crit·i·cize
/ˈkridəˌsīz/
verb
1.
indicate the faults of (someone or something) in a disapproving way.

2.
form and express a sophisticated judgment of (a literary or artistic work).
​

Asking for "constructive criticism" and being unhappy with the resulting comments is an example of interpreting a commenter's efforts at providing definition 2 as being instead comments that fit definition 1.

Not that comments sometimes aren't intended as definition 1—i.e. meant to be nasty or hurtful. I mentioned on another thread here how the poet and critic William Logan is often deliberately snide in his poetry reviews to the point that Franz Wright, at least, threatened to beat him up over the review of one of Wright's books.

While you sometimes see these kind of comments left on poems and stories published on the main Lit site, I think pretty much anyone here in the Forum is at least trying to do definition 2 when they comment on someone's work. But, as I said, it is an awful lot of work to comment (as you note) and my experience is the return I get from it is usually minimal.

Oh and your vampire poem is sublime and brutal.

Thanks. I was thinking in part about the vampire things you've written.

 

[Angeline]

Given that we all bring our own way of thinking about poems to criticism, focus helps the commentator avoid "rewriting the poem the way they would have written it."

I've been thinking about your comments on feedback, its benefits and perils, and this statement above really gets to the heart of my concerns. I always wonder that though my more substantive comments may sound great to me, may in fact be good suggestions, am I just telling someone else to rewrite in my style?

I was an editor for many years: that was my job, both line and substantive editing. And as such I was trained to nitpick. There's a hierarchy to editing. At the most basic level you're checking spelling and simple grammar and punctuation (like subject-verb agreement and adding or removing commas, for example), fact-checking. Then there's house style: every publisher has a "book" delineating how to treat capitalization and numbers, certain terms, that sort of thing. And then, with substantive editing, you get into things like clarity and continuity and whether things are stated the most gracefully or economically, whatever is most important, depending on the purpose of the document.

That all works for prose but poetry is a different animal. Even the sorts of things that seem obvious in prose (like a misspelling) can be intentional in a poem. And when you get into "a better way to say X," isn't that just the reviewer saying "write it the way I would"? I've often found myself looking over my suggestions and thinking I'm just telling so-and-so to write an Angeline poem. Ugh.

How is that dealt with in workshops? Are there objective ways to avoid it?

Yeah I'm probably overthinking stuff as usual.

 

[Tzara]

...when you get into "a better way to say X," isn't that just the reviewer saying "write it the way I would"? I've often found myself looking over my suggestions and thinking I'm just telling so-and-so to write an Angeline poem. Ugh.

How is that dealt with in workshops? Are there objective ways to avoid it?

I'm not sure that the workshops I was in had a good way to address that. They were mixed genre workshops, so participants were not just writing poetry—there were fiction and literary non-fiction works being criticized as well. That partially obviates the problem, as cross-genre criticism avoids the issue of making comments that reflect how the commenter would write something themselves, assuming the commenter doesn't write in multiple genres.

I think a good way to minimize the "write it the way I would" problem is to try to explain why you are making a particular comment or recommended change. For example I had a teacher who once recommended I change the first line of a poem that was in free verse because that line happened to be regularly iambic and, as she explained, that can set up the expectation in the reader that the iambic rhythm would continue throughout the poem, so that when it didn't continue it had a jarring effect.

Explanation of the recommendation coupled with the standard disclaimer that the original author should disregard the advice if they don't find it helpful should suffice to at least lessen the "write it the way I would" problem. As you point out, the original author may have their own reasons for even what appear to be "errors" in their poem.

The other thing of particular importance is for both author and commenter to remember that it is the poem that one is commenting on, not the poet.

 

[Angeline]

I can't emphasize how sensitive some folks are about their writing. That's why it's so important to be clear, as Tzara points out, that you're critiquing writing, not the person who wrote it. I always try to find something good and encouraging about what I read as well as what I think needs fixing. And I also am clear that I know it's just my opinion and the writer may not agree, which is fine.

Otoh I worked with one person, very learned who had been with our company far longer than me. She knew as well as me what rules we were both expected to follow. And yet she had a rubber stamp with "OK PER MKL" (her initials) that she'd stamp on every page she sent to we lowly editors. Lol! And she knew damn well it often was not ok per company rules if not my understanding and training. So one learns to be diplomatic and kind.