i posted a comment to a poem. the preference was for critical and non critical comments. aftrerwards i more or less get shot down by someone who dissagrees with me. is this normal for the writing gallery. are pat on the backs all that people really want? whats the point of asking for critical comments or giving them if people are just going to attack anyone who gives them. sorry for the cut and paste anyway below is questions asked about cliche, my answer, my comment on the poem and the reply i got from someone who isn't the author.
has anyone any views on the subject or my comment?

by billy423uk on Dec 14, 2006 3:40:35 am

So polish your skills, weaver of words,
since the gifts you bring
may yet surpass the beauty of the rose
and lack the sting

”….the last two lines seem cliché to me.”
”….and the last two lines aren't that great, kinda cliché even.”

Now I've no problem with 'the last two lines aren't that great' – a simple value-judgement which the reader's entitled to make. It's the 'cliché' part that bothers me. Someone once criticised one of my pictures on the grounds that 'nudes are cliché'…. well that's a thousand years of art dismissed. I'm simply not comfortable with this usage since it is almost always derogatory and begs some important questions:

First … who decides what is cliché? 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 think of another form of words or another image? Isn't it just possible that the writer might have selected these words because he/she wanted to?

Thirdly … the search for novelty of expression can lead to self-meaning slabs of verbal nonsense. Given the antiquity of literature it is highly unlikely that anything written now is anything more than a variant on what has been written before.

THE CLICHÉ-HOUNDS

Heard afar
a hoarse hullabaloo of harriers
tongue-lolling, straining at the leash,
eager for the chase:
the cliché-hounds gather.

Allow me, if you please,
a modest morsel of cliché
I am replete
from an esoteric gourmet feast
of exquisite exotic verbiage
served on precious platters of cunning design
and intricate verbal decoration.
Allow me, if you please,
a common slice of bread.

Permit me, if you please,
a little piece of commonplace.
I am lost
among the peerless lofty peaks
of high pretentious imagery
fearful above the deep dark metaphoric chasms
and the treacherous sloughs of similes
Permit me, if you please,
to tread familiar ways.

Sanction, if you please,
a well-known phrase or two
I am confused
by untranslatable utterances
and outré flights of wordy fancy
reversed, imploded, combined and recombined
meaning obscured and ever out of reach.
Sanction, if you please,
some plain and simple words.

Let me, if you please,
communicate direct
I am trapped
In the convoluted, involuted
multi-clausal maze of mangled structures,
obfuscation and dilettante punctuation
and inaccurate spelling to boot.
Let me, if you please,
make common cause with common men.

Heard closer
the hollow sounds of hunting hounds,
jaws a-drool, eyes wild in the search.
In the ultimate literary critical thrill
The cliché-hounds close in for the kill.

---

my reply to the cliche question

"So polish your skills, weaver of words,
since the gifts you bring
may yet surpass the beauty of the rose
and lack the sting"

a cliche and what it is. a phrase thats been used by others so many times it loses it's lustre, takes originality away, becomes boring and in doing so can lend the reader to find anotherwise good pice of writing mundane and steriotypical.

cliches are okay if you only read a bit of poetry but if you read a lot you get to the stage of here we go again. a famous poet said to use the word beauty in a poeming is risking a lot use it twice and the piece is lost. (not in those words. how many times has someone heard the phrase, beauty of a rose or polish your skills. would you enjoy a film if the same dialogue kept popping up as was in the previous film you watched.

my comments on the poem

now to comment on the poem.

first off i really enjoyed it. it had meter and flowed well. i nejoyed it best reading it allowe to myself. the last line seems or feels forced in order to end the piece. for me the poem ended with the penultimate line.

whilst it's strewn with cliches i find in this piece they work often they don't they take away what originality the poet is trying to instill in their piece.

again for me a few of the shorter words could have been left out as they take from the atnosphere of the piece.

the in the last line of the first stanza
and in the 7th line of the second stanza
the in the 4th line 3rd stanza
the in line 7 3rd stanza
in on the 4th line last stanza
and a couple more.

again for me these words add nothing to the piece and so become redundant.
that said i found it to be a good piece of writing. well done.

please don't take anything i said personally. i was just commenting on what i read as i an individual saw it.

billy