CLICHE HOUNDS

It seems to me that there are distinct differences in art criticism [including poetry] between the UK and the USA. On another site, I had these comments on two lines in one of my poems [WORD WEAVER]:

.the last two lines seem clichto me.
.and the last two lines aren't that great.. kinda cliche even.

The lines were:

..may yet surpass the beauty of the rose
and lack the sting

Now, I've no problem with 'the last two lines aren't that great' a simple value judgement which the critic was entitled to make. It's the 'clich part that bothers me. To begin with I'm sure that there is a distinct difference in usage on each side of the Atlantic.

In the UK we talk about 'a clich a noun describing an actual utterance whether spoken or written. On that basis, since I have never before heard or read that particular cluster of words [and in 61 years I've heard and read an awful lot], it cannot be a clich

In the US, however, the word seems to be used as part of a compound verb 'to be clich and as such can be and is applied to concepts, images and even themes and subjects. Someone once criticised one of my pictures on the grounds that 'nudes are clich. well that's a thousand years of art dismissed summararily! I'm simply not comfortable with this usage since it is almost always derogatory and begs some important questions:

Firstly who decides what is clich The critic? The critic and his friends? The critic's Eng. Lit. teacher/professor? And what criteria do they use?
Secondly why does the critic assume that the writer cannot create completely original form of words or another image? Isn't it just possible that the writer might have selected these words because he/she considered them to be the mosr effective or appropriate?
Thirdly the search for novelty of expression can [and often does] lead to self-meaning slabs of verbal nonsense. Given the acknowledged antiquity of literature it is highly unlikely that anything written now is anything more than a variant on what has been written before.

However, I suspect the clichhounds will continue to hunt for these are the days of whine and posers.

I'm not one to rant, so I've written a little poem as a comment.