Lately I've been browsing the writers' bulletin board on Craigslist. It is a veritable land of bad poetry and crappy critiquing. Even if a poem is cliche or "bad" in some sense, it is not appropriate to immediately dismiss it as bilge with your rubber stamp. Rather, a critic should seek to demonstrate how the poem does not work, why the themes do not appear genuine, and most importantly, instruct the acolyte in the process of making poetry.

This is a non-poet's musings on poetry.