Sarah-Jane Dobner remembers a trip to a southern gem: Portland.
An island of flint-in-mud geology, quarries and fossils. A place for dinosaurs, dragons, snakes, lizards - an ancient, reptile zoology. An oddity poking out the south of the Kingdom - straining for a fight or just offering a viewpoint?
It's clearly hit a nerve for quite a lot of forum regulars given the growing number of dislikes. I know where I sit on the subject of artistic endeavour vs mean button pressers.
I hear what you're saying. But the problem with these poems is that, well, they're just not very good. It's hard to dress them up as anything else.
I can appreciate good writing and poetry. There are some brilliant articles on this site. It's a shame and somewhat baffling that these particular poems still get published on here.
> It's clearly hit a nerve for quite a lot of forum regulars given the growing number of dislikes. I know where I sit on the subject of artistic endeavour vs mean button pressers.
Haha, me too. I can't say that I like many of the poems (to be honest I am rarely a fan of poetry, but that's ok, each to their own eh), however I reckon it makes the site better to have a range of contributions and articles. And I am sure the parking ticket non payment line was added by the poet in full knowledge that it would cause a reaction. Personally I always pay to park, but not everyone does and the line amused me (perhaps because I instantly knew how many on UKC were going to react).
It's just that each time these poems get published they generate a thread of responses from a lot of people that collectively say 'come on UKC, you can do better than this'.
I guess that's the reason they still get published- they generate clicks. Even if it's a negative thing.
You can probably dismiss some of the criticism as personal taste, however just look at the response to all of the features from this article.... there is a consistently negative view on them.. because they're rubbish.
Maybe UKC take the view that any traffic is good traffic on their site, and a negative comment is as good as a positive one. I cant think why they would persist with someone who clearly isn't very good at what she is trying to do... create poetry for the readers of UKC.
I'm not sure I would give my housemate this many attempts.
The buttons aren't "good" or "bad" so literary critiscism doesn't come into it. It's "like" or "dislike" and it's not your place to decide what WE like or not.
Two posters said in no uncertain terms it was bad poetry. The last limerick was in response to that. I have no interest whatsoever in dictating what people should like or not but think art should be given a chance (it's hardly like significant work was always popular... or the opposite...posters of female tennis players with no knickers in the Louvre!?)
The trouble with dislikes is we don't know if it's a soft 'this isn't my cup of tea' or 'a heap of excrement' or even possibly sympathy for the poet's expressed artistic concerns. It's low quality unhelpfully negative anonymous information that in informative terms could be exceeded with just a few words (that of course might leave the critic open to response). Facebook dumped the idea despite most users wanting such a button as they realised it could lead to behaviour problems (and more importantly hit their bottom line).
I'm sorry but I don't share your hubristic certainty in my own critical expertise. It's easier to be fairly certain something is not as bad as a particular public thinks. As some of the words moved and surprised me, yes I think for me it was comfortably of a quality worth publishing here. In the end invoking non straightforward emotional response, so that we ponder the highly complex human condition, is probably the most important function of art. In terms of masterpieces, near universal critically acclaimed art sometimes only moves a small minority of the public but maybe the critics are attuned to the issues involved.
I still like the idea of niche art, especially in popular culture.. marmite output clearly based on some degree of exceptional talent. I was pondering this after watching a documentary on Rush a couple of nights back... far from my favourite band but I just had to admire what they did and what they mean to a clearly intelligent fan base. https://www.rushtimestandstill.com/
Do you really need people to put a disclaimer before anything stating whether it is evidence based fact or opinion? this is POETRY, you simply cannot get something more subjective so when i said its rubbish, i meant to suffix that with 'in my opinion'.
I wholeheartedly disagree with you on the merits of the piece. You're opinion is totally valid however because of the subjective nature of the piece. Doesn't make youre right, so stop telling me i'm wrong.
Having been deleted from this thread, I refer to my previous response to the same trash last time.
This reminds me a lot of those poetry anthologies that you used to get 'published' in when you were in primary school - with parents beholden to buy a copy for the shelf, never to be read, purely because their child was in it.
My PhD supervisor used to say about art, 'I know a lot about art but I don't know what I like.' He was trying to drive a wedge between opinion and critique. We can speak critically about poetry without expressing an opinion about it. About the present work, I would like to make a general comment. I find it difficult to read poetry on the UKC website - this poetry, any poetry - simply because it is not the place I go to read poetry. It is where I go for my type 2 fun fantasies, and they are particularly resistant to aestheticisation. If this author is brave, it is because she has insisted on colonising such alien terrain. And about that thumbs up/down thingie up at the top left corner, I don't think that is an acceptable response to a complex piece of work. That thing is for when your friends snapchat you a new purchase or haircut and expect you to say they are great.
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