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Brad
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0 posted 2009-03-22 07:20 AM



And this the end for me. By that, I don't mean I won't post here anymore. I simply cannot fathom a reason to be moderator anymore. Ron or M., or anybody else, consistently has missed the point. This is my fault, not theirs.

I do not understand what they say and what they do. I am stuck. I am done.

I nominate Stephen to be the new moderator of philosophy. Yes, we disagree. But that has never been an issue here. Philosophy is about allowing people to say what they want, not delete them because you feel it doesn't follow principles.

© Copyright 2009 Brad - All Rights Reserved
Brad
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1 posted 2009-03-22 07:23 AM


Like Boomer, Ron, I will always owe you one. You need something, I will try.

My rule of thumb is always: If I can, I will.

Grinch
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Whoville
2 posted 2009-03-22 08:26 AM


I think Yeats described CA quite well.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats


Brad
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3 posted 2009-03-22 08:30 AM


Grinch,

Do we not, both of us, have that poem memorized?

Grinch
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Whoville
4 posted 2009-03-22 09:25 AM



Ron too probably.

I think this is the killer line for both him and me:

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The way I see it CA failed because of the potential for an unwanted drowning, the consensus seems to be that putting up a few “danger deep water” signs was the way to go. My own view is that the way to avoid the potential for a drowning wasn’t to dissuade the bathers with stricter rules, all it was lacking was another lifeguard, one with a different stroke aimed more at handing out water wings and stopping the high divers splashing water in the faces of the casual swimmers.

You and Pete were good lifeguards Brad, there were simply not enough of you to go around to see some of the potential Stevie Smith’s - not waving but drowning.


Brad
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5 posted 2009-03-22 09:39 AM


Hmmm,

perhaps. I'm stuck with the idea that nobody else really wanted to be the lifeguard.

That was never a problem for me. Time and family however have always been an issue.

You can worry about that line,
I worry about

quote:
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Grinch
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Whoville
6 posted 2009-03-22 10:13 AM



I’d have given it a go Brad, though I doubt that Ron would have seen me as an acceptable contender.

Hence my being a little backwards in coming forwards.

I'm the shy retiring type if you hadn't noticed.


Not A Poet
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7 posted 2009-03-22 11:46 AM


Certainly not all your fault Brad. If anything, probably more mine than yours. I do understand your frustration and apparent confusion.

Grinch, I don't agree with you on CA needing an additional moderator. With the rate of activity there, a single mod was plenty. If you meant a new one to replace the old cynics then, maybe.

And Ron, although I proved to not be capable, I do appreciate your giving me the opportunity to try moderating your forum. It has been one of my more pleasurable life experiences. I met a lot of good, friendly and intelligent people there and learned a lot from them as well as from the job. For that, I remain in your debt. For what it's worth though, If starting over, I'm afraid I would handle it pretty much the same. Sure, there were mistakes and I would hope to correct those but the overall approach would not change. I guess I didn't learn that part.

Also, should Brad step down, I agree that Stephen would make a excellent moderator for Philosophy.

Pete

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8 posted 2009-03-22 04:48 PM


There must be some kind of way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Business men they drink my wine
Ploughmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth

No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour's getting late

All along the watchtower
Prince's kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants too
Outside in the cold distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching

And the wind began to howl
All along the watchtower
All along the watchtower
All along the watchtower

--Bob Dylan

moonbeam
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9 posted 2009-03-22 05:08 PM




quote:
My own view is that the way to avoid the potential for a drowning wasn't to dissuade the bathers with stricter rules, all it was lacking was another lifeguard,

Yes Grinch, I agree that would be the ideal.  Several lifeguards in fact and not even necessarily moderators.  Just commonsense and a clear view of what the purpose was, and what the boundaries were.

In the beginning there was a settled goodwill to make things work and a cache of people willing to be around a lot.  This got the forum through the difficult patches.  Neither the goodwill or the cache lasted, and eventually the underlying tension between aspiration and reality caused the centre not to hold.

I'm full of passionate intensity which I suppose makes me the worst.

Sorry to see you so disillusioned Brad, thought I don't see why you suddenly pick now.  CA was really lost a while back imo.  But maybe that's one of the things you don't follow.

Brad
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10 posted 2009-03-22 08:05 PM


But both Jim and Bob started contributing in those last two years.

As to the Monk Frost thing, we had similar problems from the very beginning. That's one of the reasons Ruth became a moderator.

But M., in Grinch's thread you were worried that people weren't being critical enough. Ron is arguing that people need to be more civil. These aren't opposing views but they are different goals.

And everybody, everybody, everybody seems to be offended by something. I can't figure out what the next thing will be and tend to think that most of it can be talked through.  A moderator is necessary when things cross the line. I saw nothing that crossed the line (no doubt Ron and I disagree on where that line is).

Why now? I don't know. I've never liked deleting stuff. Maybe I just felt it was time to stop being a MINO.

Brad
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11 posted 2009-03-22 08:22 PM


Let me give an example: earlier this morning, I was reading in Open and looked at one that requested a crit.

Okay, I had a couple of things to say but then I read the responses and they went along the lines of "You don't need crit, it's perfect as is."

I hesitated. Not because I think I'm wrong or that I was going to give bad advice, not because I thought they were wrong in sharing that opinion, but because it looks like a headache waiting to happen.

By offering a crit however polite, I am challenging their view. Now maybe nothing would have happened this time around but to me it looks like a migraine waiting to happen.

And as far as I can tell Open moderators already take enough aspirin.  

Do you see what I'm getting at?

Huan Yi
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12 posted 2009-03-22 09:01 PM


.


What's dead is dead
Bury it and move on . . .


.

JenniferMaxwell
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13 posted 2009-03-22 09:27 PM


I get your point, Brad...I think. So what do you recommend - doing away with all critique requests,  never expressing a conflicting point of view?

Take a look at Bob’s most recent critique and see how he deals with a situation similar to that, voicing a opinion different from that of another critter without turning it into a challenge. There’s a lesson there for all of us.


Brad
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14 posted 2009-03-22 09:45 PM


A clique?

JenniferMaxwell
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15 posted 2009-03-22 10:01 PM


Oh well, I tried.
Brad
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16 posted 2009-03-22 11:39 PM


Hmmmm,

I guess you're not a big fan of the idea. Fair enough. Still, if you want something like CA back, doesn't it makes sense to show Ron how it might work?

I like the idea of a clique because it circumvents a lot of the problems that have been specifically addressed. It doesn't take a lot of people, and it's easy to coordinate. It doesn't have to be elitist. People who want do it just have to ask. And best of all, the only thing you really have to do is follow the general rules for PIP.

It's a win win situation.

Until reality wakes up.

moonbeam
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17 posted 2009-03-23 04:45 AM




quote:
What's dead is dead
Bury it and move on . . .

You're missing the point Huan.  This isn't about CA, this is about exploring what poetry can be, or is. That will never die.

moonbeam
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18 posted 2009-03-23 05:43 AM


And I agree with Brad totally on both counts here:

First, I know exactly what you mean about posting to Open threads where somebody has already said a poem is "perfect".  Especially where they couple it to a personal reference to something challenging going on in the poster's life.  Any comment other that a completely positive and supportive one potentially upsets both the other replier and the original poster.  There have been many threads in Open I'd like to comment on, where the crit flag is "Yes" but I don't feel I can for those reasons.  

This Ron is why I said in the other thread that you do need a different forum, where the expectation is tilted away from pure social networking and support toward just comment on the poem.  It doesn't preclude chat and respect and tolerance, but what it does do is remove the implied default position that says: being negative about a poem = being negative about the poster and the other repliers.

Second:

I agree with Brad again about the "clique".  Clique is an emotional word.  But what I think he, and I mean, is simply a group of regulars who also act as quasi-monitors of the goings on in the forum.  If they all have a clear idea of what is and isn't desirable (according to Ron's ideas of course) then I think it might work.  In fact in the past it has worked.

Also, as someone commented on what I said a while back, I should mention that I suppose I've shifted my thinking a bit recently.  More rules and more "moderator" participation are an either/or I suspect.  More participation would obviate the necessity for rules I guess.  As for very harsh critiques, I suspect they are rarely, if ever, justified.

And on moderation, look at what that excellent moderator of the Poetry Workshop has just done.  Chops and I were getting rather too garrulous, off topic banter, and he simply weighed in with a reminder that we were in a workshop, where banter is quite rightly discouraged.  That's all I've really ever argued for in CA: just a few lines, like Balladeer just drew, where a mod would step in and nip unworkshoplike behaviour in the bud before acrimony started.  

If Ron, you don't think what Monk Frost did was "unworkshoplike" then we ain't gonna agree.  But let's just see what Balladeer does with his recent post

/pip/Forum22/HTML/000992.html

in the Poetry Workshop shall we?

M

PS (some hours later)  

Voila! :

"Not Found

The requested URL /pip/Forum22/HTML/000992.html was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

Deleted or moved without ceremony or fuss.  Now what was so hard about that?

[This message has been edited by moonbeam (03-23-2009 10:47 AM).]

Ron
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19 posted 2009-03-23 11:20 AM


Sorry, Rob, but waiting for Balladeer isn't an option; I got to it first. I have no doubt Mike would have done the same, though he probably would have sent a nice letter (I didn't, because I've already sent several).

Poems are regularly moved from places they don't belong. Like from the Poetry Workshop, from Passions in Prose, and from any of the discussion forums. Each of those forums have posted rules. Until Mike recently stepped in and loosened the rules, it wasn't even possible for someone to start a thread in his Workshop without permission. That's the way it was designed to work.

CA had no such posted rules, in large part because I've always argued against them. Several days before the forum was closed, I tried to make it clear the direction we were headed wasn't going to fly. I guess I was too subtle.

FTR, round about ten years ago, this collective forum was the end result of a handful of people who were tired of seeing trash and being trashed at other sites. It was formed by a clique. So, yea, a clique can definitely work. The one in CA very much didn't work.



Not A Poet
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20 posted 2009-03-23 11:29 AM


quote:
The one in CA very much didn't work.

Depends very much on your point of view.


Ron
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21 posted 2009-03-23 11:52 AM


Maybe so, Pete. Seems to me, though, it mostly depends on the results?
Local Rebel
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22 posted 2009-03-23 02:49 PM


It seems to me Brad that the whole point of 'Daybreak' was about starting fresh, a new day, leaving the past behind.  Exploring, cultivating, -- the riders are going to the watchtower full of Princes and Principalities -- to change what?  Because what is the real value?  In the end I mean.  And if it's the real value in the end -- shouldn't it be now?

Spoken only in friendship as one thief to a joker.

Dark Star
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Lost in your eyes
23 posted 2009-03-23 02:59 PM


speaking of the end of the Battle star galactica, i just watched it yesterday, good episode

Lana

moonbeam
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24 posted 2009-03-23 04:53 PM


quote:
Sorry, Rob, but waiting for Balladeer isn't an option; I got to it first.


I'm not sure why you are apologising Ron.  Of course it's not an option, the sooner it was cleared off the board the better.  It kind of reinforces my point.
quote:
I have no doubt Mike would have done the same, though he probably would have sent a nice letter (I didn't, because I've already sent several).

See, what's a shame is that you didn't mention that you were sending letters to him when he was bombarding CA.  If we had know you were doing something positive to resolve the situation perhaps a certain impatience wouldn't have developed.  Not that it would ultimately have made any real difference.
quote:
Poems are regularly moved from places they don't belong. Like from the Poetry Workshop, from Passions in Prose, and from any of the discussion forums. Each of those forums have posted rules. Until Mike recently stepped in and loosened the rules, it wasn't even possible for someone to start a thread in his Workshop without permission. That's the way it was designed to work.

CA had no such posted rules, in large part because I've always argued against them.

Well there you go.  That's fine Ron.  I understand now.  

For some reason (which incidentally I still don't fully understand) you were willing to post rules in other workshops but not in CA.  The long and short of it is that the Poetry Workshop was designed to work in a way that worked and CA was "designed" to work in a way that didn't work, because that's the way you wanted it.  It makes it sound awfully like you (or someone) half wanted it to fail when stated like that.  Workshops in real life don't work with little admin input and no rules, so I really don't understand why anybody is surprised that CA didn't.

And lest you cite the respect and tolerance issue again; it seems to me that respect and tolerance are not threatened by additional rules in other forums, so I wonder why they should have been in CA.  I actually believe the reverse.  Some small rules and boundaries would have avoided misunderstanding and promoted respect and tolerance.
quote:
Several days before the forum was closed, I tried to make it clear the direction we were headed wasn't going to fly. I guess I was too subtle.

Nope not at all.  As I've said several times now, I saw the signs a way back, both from you and from my own observation.  I'll say again: it's sad to lose some sort of critiquing forum, but CA was doomed in its design, and I'm glad to see the back of it because, despite the sporadic efforts of valiants like Grinch, Jenn, Jim, Bob and Brad, it's been imo very far from a productive forum or a nice place to be for a long while.
quote:
FTR, round about ten years ago, this collective forum was the end result of a handful of people who were tired of seeing trash and being trashed at other sites. It was formed by a clique. So, yea, a clique can definitely work. The one in CA very much didn't work.

Yes, I know about the origins Ron.  You do yourself and Nan and the rest an injustice by describing yourselves as a clique.  Group of very kind, well meaning and generous people would be nearer the mark.  

You rightly had complete control and close liaison with each other as well as a lasting empathy.  But you aren't really comparing like with like Ron.  CA had to rely on volunteer moderators and an assortment of ephemeral regulars (if you'll forgive the oxymoron).  There were a couple of times that a group knitted for long enough to hold things together pretty well, but the way now I read it, the lack of clarity/rules/discipline (yes, discipline is what Balladeer has in the Poetry Workshop) ultimately caused dissatisfactions that caused such groups to fragment when they could have held together and been strengthened.  I find that a pity.

One other thing.  I'm trying to listen to my better side Ron   , but even so I can't help wondering if you (and others) really wanted CA to succeed, or whether it wasn't just a  bit of an embarrassment and occasional annoyance.  It almost seemed to me that a times you were ignoring the build up of challenging situations in order to test the patience of the posters there to see whether in fact they would break the respect and tolerance guidelines.  And when they did you could turn round and say; "I told you so" or "this forum ain't working".

Ron, I know I've probably riled you again in this post.  I hope not though, because I mean none of it vindictively.  I know that you are honourable, and I'm simply trying to understand what seem to me like contradictions of approach.  Above all, Rebel is right.  I don't believe in turning the clock back to another CA.  Perhaps rather pathetically however, I still cling to the belief that conceptually a critiquing workshop at PiP could have been made to work well within the umbrella of your respect and tolerance philosophy.

Thanks for listening to me yet again.  

Rob

Brad
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25 posted 2009-03-23 05:04 PM


LR,

Yes. You're the only one so far who has pointed out the connection I was making.  

Watchtoweranalysis

I wish I agreed with this more than I do but I have a hard time seeing the two riders as the joker and the thief.

M.,

Yes.

Pete,

Yes.

Ron,

Yes.

Everybody's right. And I don't see anything contradictory there. As usual, the right way to go comes down to the nitty gritty details.

PS One of the most interesting subtexts in BSG was Galen's (the Chief's) relationship with women. Boomer, Cally, and Tory are all murderers. It is at least implied that Cally and Tory murdered because they loved Galen.

I feel for the guy, I really do.

Dark Star
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Lost in your eyes
26 posted 2009-03-23 05:06 PM


Laura's death was shocking

Local Rebel
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27 posted 2009-03-23 11:26 PM


Lana... I don't think it was shocking -- we all expected it.  Still -- that doesn't make it less painful when it happens for real.  But it's our job to live.

Brad -- I don't think it matters whether or not we see them as the riders -- the riders could just as easily be the riders of the apocalypse and the joker could be Jesus talking to the thief on the cross as some have interpreted it.

The theme is the same either way.

We know that things are going to change.

Maybe it's time to build that cabin and bury the dead.

Brad
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28 posted 2009-03-23 11:40 PM


Okay.

Thanks to every one.

I have to start building a cabin.

moonbeam
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29 posted 2009-03-24 04:04 AM


Exactly what dead are we burying though Rebel?
Ron
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30 posted 2009-03-24 05:40 AM


quote:
The long and short of it is that the Poetry Workshop was designed to work in a way that worked and CA was "designed" to work in a way that didn't work, because that's the way you wanted it.

The Poetry Workshop was conceived and implemented as a classroom environment, Rob. It was very much teacher-centric, and structured to protect the control of the teacher. Nan (and for the last year, Mike) was the only person who could "start" a lesson. For most of that time, until Mike asked that it be changed, posters had to ASK to be admitted to a class. Only then could they post a poem in direct response to a lesson. When the lesson was deemed over by the instructor, all resulting threads were closed and locked. And they moved on to the next lesson.

Mike handles it a little differently, which is only to be expected, but the emphasis is still the same. The teacher is the source, the fountainhead, the wellspring, from which all forum activity flows. The teacher sets the agenda.

Compare that with Critical Analysis. There is no teacher, no fountainhead, no source of authoritative control. The wellspring from which all forum activity flows is the individual poet. Until a poem is posted, there's nothing to do. The writer, not the teacher, is in control.

I don't think CA was designed to work in a way that didn't work. I think it was designed to work for a much wider spectrum of visitor. Participate where it pleased and ignore where it didn't. The structure only failed where someone wanted it to work their way to the exclusion of any other way. It failed, I think, where critiquing was privileged over writing.

My goal is to encourage people to write. I don't feel any great need to encourage people to critique. I've always been willing to support critique -- but ONLY insofar as it encourages people to write.

quote:
I can't help wondering if you (and others) really wanted CA to succeed, or whether it wasn't just a  bit of an embarrassment and occasional annoyance.  It almost seemed to me that a times you were ignoring the build up of challenging situations in order to test the patience of the posters there to see whether in fact they would break the respect and tolerance guidelines.  And when they did you could turn round and say; "I told you so" or "this forum ain't working".

Nope, not even close. My dereliction was nothing quite so fancy. The truth, being far simpler, is that I only entered CA as a chore, never as a participant. That means I didn't get there often, and obviously it wasn't often enough.

Please understand, I have no loyalty to critiquing, at least not as I've seen it practiced here. I think most of it was wrong and what wasn't wrong was nit picking. Divorcing a poem from emotion is a bit like trying to explain a joke; anything that was there is lost in the process. Except for the mechanics, I honestly don't understand how critiquing can be useful to the learning process. But that's okay. It doesn't have to work for me to gain my support. I'm not dissing critiquing so much as trying to explain why I didn't spend much time in the forum. Most of the critiques I read just irritated the crap out of me, and that's a feeling I usually try to avoid.

However, while I have no great loyalty to critiquing, I have a great deal of loyalty to the people I like.

Brad has been a friend for over a decade, Pete for nearly as long, and there's a very long list of names associated with CA, both past and present, that I will forever owe a debt of gratitude. I really don't care if ANY individual forum succeeds, but I very much care whether the people who champion it succeed. So, yea, I really wanted Critical Analysis to succeed. For Brad and Pete and everyone else who has ever been involved. The worst part about closing any forum (and we've closed only a few) is knowing I've let down my friends.



moonbeam
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31 posted 2009-03-24 11:03 AM


Ron

Grateful again for the time you've taken to explain your mind.  I don't think there's much you've written that you haven't either impliedly or explicitly said before except maybe shifts of emphasis to answer my questions, so apologies if this turns into a ramble.

Perhaps what you expected CA to be and what it wanted to become were continually at odds (the tension).  

You attribute every breakdown to "someone wanting it to work their way to the exclusion of any other".  In that statement I think you hit the nail on the head, but not in the way you meant.  That someone is you Ron.

But I don't want to personalise this too much because what we are actually talking about is the underlying PiP ethos.  At the back of everything that was going on in CA was a deep mistrust of the word "critique" by many of the powers behind PiP, together with this curious idea, voiced by someone I was talking to in Open the other day and now again by you, that critique somehow, what was your phrase: divorces a poem from emotion.  And, you know what, this attitude shared by quite a few PiPsters it seems, really saddens me.  

It saddens me partly because I think people like me are somewhat responsible for it.  I regret the sometimes overly harsh critiques I've made in CA; it wasn't the place for them.  I also don't really think overly mechanistic critiques are that helpful either, although in that respect I'm rather less guilty I hope.

It saddens me also because it is patently so wrong.  As an aside, it doesn't help in my view to use the word "critique" coupled with that soulless forensic word "analysis".  You are bound to alienate a significant proportion of the "from the heart" (meant kindly) poets before you even embark on any "critical analysis", with a signboard like that. And it seems to me now quite obvious that if you have a site owner and his near colleagues who believe that in-depth discussion of "what makes poetry work" will somehow subvert the emotional core of that poetry then you are pretty much blowing in the face of a hurricane if you try to set up a forum ostensibly to do just that.

Furthermore, if you really think that my recent commentaries  in Open and Teen are a threat to the essence of poetry, then I guess we might as well end any further discussion, because personally I'm nowhere near reaching the conviction that it isn't helpful to the learning process generally to read a poem very closely and repeatedly and to try and figure out what makes it attractive, or thought provoking, or beautiful or creepy or, for that matter, what makes it boring or uninspiring.  Perhaps you don't learn from that process Ron, but I know many who have done so, and do.  And that really is all I am talking about here.  A mutual learning process based upon multiple personal opinions of what works and doesn't work and why.  

I'm totally with you on encouraging people to write, but my own experience is that if people can obtain honest comment from their peers they will tend to write more if anything (at least that was my experience a few years back when I tried to offer such a service and eventually had to stop because my mailbox was  burying me).

You say that CA used to annoy you, that what you read was wrong.  In my definition of "critique" there's no room for "wrong".  Sure if you are trying to help a very young or inexperienced poet there are probably some basic ideas that you can suggest, and some ways of writing that you can suggest might be best avoided to start with.  But generally, just as in poetry there is no wrong, neither is there a "wrong" in honest comment.  I suspect (and hope) you're talking about the sort of critique that begins: "Never, never, use capitals at the start of lines for the sake of it.  All sonnets must be 14 lines of iambic pentameter.  Don't ever use the word "love", it's cliche."  Perhaps CA "allowed" too much of that; perhaps it allowed too much of a lot of things that would have been better discouraged.  Perhaps, for example, rather than leaving it for other (less erudite) members to jump on me for being pompous you or Pete or Brad should have done it.

Which brings me neatly to your comments about the Workshop forum.  Certainly it was set up differently.  It was set up, as you say, with more constraints upon the ways of posting and replying and it works.  Once we agree what CA should have been; which it is by no means certain we ever shall, then I am simply saying that CA could well have worked with a stated clear purpose (see Bob's ideas), clearer guidelines and a firmer hand to ensure those guidelines were adhered to (and a different name).

But overall I keep coming back to this uncomfortable feeling that your heart was never really in CA, that you don't actually believe or understand that there are some forms of in depth commentary that both inform the poet and the commentator while, far from harming the emotional drivers behind the writing, actually enhance a writer's ability to convey them to his or her readers.  Unless I've misread that, until you shift your viewpoint  on this I think it would be a very bad idea indeed to start up any further form of CRHC forum at PiP.

And I feel there's quite a mountain to climb here Ron, because I know you hold friendship and good relations in high regard; you have, as you said, known Pete and Brad for a very long time, yet when you closed CA I understand (forgive me if I'm wrong) you did it unilaterally without consultation or discussion with those longstanding moderators.  It seems to me that your animosity towards the forum and what it stood for had reached a pitch where plain good manners went out the window; that to my mind was letting them down in a bigger way than was really necessary.  It is however a measure I suspect of just how far you will need to travel in your own thinking, and how far the rest of us have to travel in our behaviour to regain your trust, before such a forum ever reappears at PiP.

Rob

PS Btw, given what you feel, I think it's extremely decent of you to carry on discussing in this way Ron.  Tolerance is something you sure do live.    

Huan Yi
Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688
Waukegan
32 posted 2009-03-24 08:20 PM


.


"That someone is you Ron."


I too always suspected
in his heart of hearts
Ron had three 6's
under that black hat.


.


moonbeam
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Member Elite
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356

33 posted 2009-03-25 04:00 AM


Far from it Huan, more like a halo than three 6's.

Absolutely benign, very well intentioned; but all-powerful - bit like the Almighty in fact     .

PS Just quickly:

Huan's joke has made me think that I was unclear in what I said.  

That comment wasn't any sort of jibe at Ron, I was simply trying to make the point that ultimately he was the single person able to determine how CA worked.  Sure, people came along who, as Ron put it, disrupted the structure, but they weren't the cause of its failure.  The cause of it's failure imo was the inability of the structure to deal with such disruption.

Sorry to go back to the recent example of MF in the Poetry Workshop, but contrast the efficient way in which his potential disruption was dealt with, with the way in which wrangles in CA developed over the years.

Anyway I'm repeating myself.  I'm not sure I have a lot more to say on this for now, which I expect will be a relief to you all .

[This message has been edited by moonbeam (03-25-2009 05:16 AM).]

Grinch
Member Elite
since 2005-12-31
Posts 2929
Whoville
34 posted 2009-03-25 05:15 PM



quote:
Sorry to go back to the recent example of MF in the Poetry Workshop, but contrast the efficient way in which his potential disruption was dealt with, with the way in which wrangles in CA developed over the years.


Moon,

MF was posting inappropriately in the Workshop so his post was removed whereas he wasn’t doing anything wrong in CA, which is why his posts remained.

Ron has made several references to this but I’m not sure people are getting it - CA wasn’t closed because of the actions of people like MF, it was closed because of the reactions of the rest of us.

He didn’t do anything wrong - we did.


Dark Star
Member
since 2008-02-20
Posts 392
Lost in your eyes
35 posted 2009-03-25 05:33 PM


Still its kinda sad for her to die, mostly being the main cast, all series finales always have main characters dying, I love it lol, and Kara being God's helper, good episode

moonbeam
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Member Elite
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356

36 posted 2009-03-26 04:18 AM


quote:
MF was posting inappropriately in the Workshop so his post was removed whereas he wasn't doing anything wrong in CA, which is why his posts remained.

Ron has made several references to this but I'm not sure people are getting it - CA wasn't closed because of the actions of people like MF, it was closed because of the reactions of the rest of us.

He didn't do anything wrong - we did.

Two points here Grinch, first the minor one:

It is possible imv, even within the embracing PiP philosophy, to argue that MF was in fact pushing the boundaries.  The section of the guidelines I cited in the forum makes it clear that responsiveness is greatly encouraged, he certainly wasn't responsive.  Additionally, everyone who's been in online forums where exchanges of views are promoted knows that it's considered fairly rude to enter a place as a newbie and simply post poem after poem, not for days mind, but for weeks, and ignore all responses.  That in my view may breach the PiP guideline on respect.  

However the main point is that of course I get the fact that (if you ignore my minor point above) we did something wrong not MF.  But that's been my point all along.  I accept Ron did the right thing closing CA, because CA was always an environment and a structure where we were likely to "do wrong".  The fault however lay in lack of clarity about the purpose and a failure to appreciate that such a forum could not exist comfortably in PiP without additional somethings.  MF was removed in the Workshop because, as you put it, he was posting inappropriately, he wasn't removed in CA because he wasn't posting inappropriately.  In my ideal discussion forum he would have been, but then I didn't and don't fix the boundaries.  Which is perhaps just as well     .

M

Jim B
New Member
since 2009-04-13
Posts 1

37 posted 2009-04-13 03:07 PM


quote:
Maybe so, Pete. Seems to me, though, it mostly depends on the results?


I'd say producing better readers and writers of poetry is a result.  I've never been one to confuse good with prolific, which is probably why I felt at home there.  Well, I'm sorry to see CA go.

(FYI, I'm the poet formerly known as "jbouder" ... lost my password and discontinued the old email account ... geeze).

Jim

moonbeam
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Member Elite
since 2005-12-24
Posts 2356

38 posted 2009-04-13 04:40 PM


Jim

While I sympathise with your point of view (how could I not, I was one who learned and improved there), I think that as the years progressed and new blood was not brought in to bolster and energise the moderation effort, it became unrealistic to expect Pete and Brad to maintain the level of participation necessary to try and make it work.  And by "make it work" I mean keep the benefits at a sufficiently high level to outweight the disbenefits.

Just my opinion.

M

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