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Underground > Creation >

How to Do The Creation

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We're The Great Old Ones Now

15:46 / 08.04.02

Sparked by the 'debate' in Daily Poetry, and by my earlier confrontation with the Knowledge over the Play etc.

I would suggest that Creation needs to be the most tolerant part of the board, because this is where we take risks. I would suggest that the occasionally acid tone of the other sections be scrupulously avoided.

I would suggest in particular that 'that's crap' is not a useful response here.

Thoughts about how this place works and how it differs from the rest of the board and just about anything...place 'em here - think of it as a mini-policy for this bit.

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:22 / 08.04.02

I can certainly understand the logic of being nice to the sensitive types, but I would also suggest that the idea that creation is "where we take risks" shows a somewhat cyclopean perceptive on many other parts of the board. An opinion expressed in the Head Shop or a confession in the Conversation or a belief in the Switchboard could surely be as fondly held, as lovingly formed and as generally "this is my beautiful baby, please do not smash it by the ankles against a wall over and over again" as the beautiful babies in the Creation.

I am also not sure that the Interwebnet needs another place where works can be greeted with "Loved it :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:".

Perhaps it would be best if topics were flagged in their abstracts as "criticism-positive" or "criticism-negative", so that if the creator does not want to be the recipient of criticism, they can exempt themselves. Or, indeed, a sliding scale along the same lines.

16:36 / 08.04.02

"That's crap" is not valid? What about "That's horrid"? Cos I just did that.

Matthew Fluxington

16:37 / 08.04.02

What exactly is the point (besides petty narcissism) of posting your own creative writing here unless you are hoping to have it reviewed and scrutinized by other Barbelith members?

If it's not going to be eligable for criticism, then I really don't think it has any good reason to be on this website - it's just indulgent nonsense better suited to personal websites and blogs.

Also, those of us who are so terrified of having their work bashed are often those who need to have their illusions shattered the most. How does one expect to improve or progress without having constructive (or sometimes even non-constructive) input from others?

16:53 / 08.04.02

Well, in the case of the current Daily Poetry debate, I have pointed out that there is another thread dedicated to the criticism of poems posted here. I realize that without any editorializing (is that a word?), the DP thread is very self-indulgent. My intent in starting it up was for there to be somewhere where those who wanted to post poems could be self-indulgent. I agree that having our peers lend suggestions and criticism is extremely helpful, but I would also like for there to be a place here where if someone just wants to scan through and read a bit of verse, free- or otherwise, that they can without having to deal with the commentary. I've posted a couple of poems on the "Poetrial" thread, and would love to see it continued, as the suggestions I've received there were most helpful.

And I think that's the crux of the matter. If you're going to give an opinion, or criticise, or make a suggestion, try to at least give a reason for it, rather than just saying something sucked. While criticism, however harsh, can always be helpful, insult never is.

Zoom.

Matthew Fluxington

17:31 / 08.04.02

That doesn't answer the question as to why there needs to be a place to post selfindulgent poetry which is exempt from criticism on Barbelith.

Wouldn't it be better to keep that sort of thing to yr blog or someplace else equally more appropriate for such things?

It seems like yr trying to have yr cake and eat it too, Zoom.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

17:58 / 08.04.02

I think a distinction needs to be made between criticism and abuse.

I haven't actually checked, but my impression is that threads in the Creation are more easily killed by passing negative comment than those elsewhere. Also, much like the Magick, it's an area which doesn't get as much cross-traffic as one might wish.

Haus: We can ask people, if you like, whether they're more likely to chance a post in Head Shop or Conversation than here. Of course, they might not answer if they think you're going to accuse them, however obliquely, of being precious little art-wankers.

It's a forum which has, until recently (thank you, Knowledge) been almost entirely devoid of people being unpleasant to one another, even if they thought something wasn't as good as it could be.

I'd suggest (and it may just be me) that this arena is less about debate and analysis and more about creation and synthesis than the rest of the board, and therefore that slightly different rules have to apply.

19:30 / 08.04.02

"I would also like for there to be a place here where if someone just wants to scan through and read a bit of verse, free- or otherwise, that they can without having to deal with the commentary"

I think that actually does answer that question, Flux, at least in my opinion.
I don't think any of the other creative threads in the Creation are commented on or criticised. "Morrison Moore", "The Surreal Half-Hour", the Memento-style story, none of these suffered from the interruption of criticism and/or abuse. I think the Daily Poetry suffers for having breaks in the verse. If I read a book of poetry I don't want to see a commentary on each and every piece. This ends up colouring the way I think about and interpret the poem. I think Daily Poetry should be free of influence. I've been far less inclined to post poetry over the last few days because I don't want the next post along to be someone slagging me. And I've just given my blessing to anyone who wants to critique my stuff in the "Poetrial". What's the problem with having two separate threads for these two separate functions (creation and criticism)?

Originally posted by Flux
"It seems like yr trying to have yr cake and eat it too, Zoom"

That would presuppose that somehow the thread is mine and mine alone. I never claimed it as such.

Zoom.

Matthew Fluxington

19:38 / 08.04.02

No, it doesn't answer the question.

The question is: "Why does this commentary/criticism-free poetry need to be on Barbelith?"

I don't see the point of having a one-way communication here, I don't see how it helps anyone. Just posting one's own poetry without allowing feedback seems like an abuse of this community, and suggests vanity and narcissism on the part of those posting the criticism-exempt writings.

There are a number of ways to put your poetry online. Unless you want the thoughts and reactions of Barbelith members, then why does it have to be on Barbelith?

ONLY NICE THINGS

19:48 / 08.04.02

Personally, I am looking forward to the relentless persecution of Imperator de Jade for his less than constructive comments on the work of Billy Corgan. Formerly celebrated if never relevant rock stars have feelings too, you know.

I think Zoom makes a very good point - that the ongoing narratives are less prone to interruption because, with the exception of Mr. Knodge, people comparatively rarely felt entitled to disrupt the flow with editorial comment. However, editorial *threads* did spring up to compensate for this absence.

So, as I say, perhaps it is necessary to notify where a thread contains material that may be criticised, either on the thread itself or a parallel thread, as Zoom has in "poetrial" and autopilot has elsewhere with prose.

On the other hand, Zoom did say "Mock if you like. I don't care." Perhaps he would have done well to have added "as long as you do it outside this thread".

23:25 / 08.04.02

I just hate it when my words come back and bite me on the ass.
Fair enough. Flux, if you, or anyone else feels they need to comment on the poetry in the Daily Poetry thread actually in that thread, then do so. I'm not going to for the reasons I've already stated and don't feel I need to reiterate. I will allow that there are probably people who enjoy a little critique of a poem after having read it. I'm not one of those people. I prefer to interpret uninfluenced. When I read that thread I look forward to actually reading poems, rather than rants. If the current kerfuffle has had one positive consequence, it's that there's more variety there than when it was just me.

Zoom.

23:39 / 08.04.02

Cluck &
click &
clack &
clock &
clerk.
My wind over your reads is
so many scratches
in the
dark.
Wank my work.
Stank my jerk.
Slink my mirk.
Spit
it
out.
Or chew well.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

07:05 / 09.04.02

Right. There's now a thread on mollycoddling of artists over in the Head Shop.

Flux: I don't think this should be a space for uncriticised work. However, I do think it's a place where anyone offering criticism should be careful about the way in which they do it. Perhaps this is a place for the half-baked, the incomplete - and these things are by definition less resilient than final products.

I would suggest that unlike much of the board, where the emphasis is on establishing truths or tearing down falsehoods and lousy ideas, this area is about generating something. If it's flawed, that's fine. Artistic efforts often are. Many artists spend their entire lives repeating one essential theme, trying to get it right. But here, surely, the point has to be to make something, rather than to get it spot on.

And that being the case, there comes a moment when you have to back off , because otherwise the person you're talking to will never finish what they're doing - you'll have cut so much of the extra meat away from their work that the body dies.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:35 / 09.04.02

As Nick said:
"However, I do think it's a place where anyone offering criticism should be careful about the way in which they do it."

Criticism needn't be destructive, or even rude. Constructive, I think, is the operative word. "I liked that bit, but I think you could have done a little bit more with that bit", or "I really hoped that other bit was going to go off into etc." is a million miles away from "That's poo", which, I think most people would agree, gets nobody anywhere. Remembering that someone's invested time and passion into whatever they're doing is... well, it's about as good a definition of common courtesy as I've heard.

13:05 / 09.04.02

I am so not a theory bitch, so I'll post here.

I got into an argument with one of the twins at the NYC meet about where you should put your artistic work on the board. I said that if I were to draw up a short comic and wanted criticism I could and should put it on the Comics forum. If I wanted to create a comic with others, or talk about the creation of comics, I'd do so in the Creation, and post the final product in the Comics forum. He felt differently, that it should all go into the Creation. I just feel that if people are going to be critical about X-men, Pounded, etc. why not throw your work in there with your "peers".

Work in progress equals Creation. Finished work equals respective forum.

That said, like Flux, I did think the Poetry thread was a bit of an odd thing to put on Barbelith. But like so many things, it's turned into something not originally intended, from a one-man, inclusive, criticism-free thread into an inspiration for others to put pen to paper and critique each others work to help forge better poems.

I don't think that the Creation is so much more different than the Head Shop, as was mentioned there. The primary difference, I think, is that many of the Creation threads aren't just for talking about how to create something, but are the creations themselves. Any break in these threads for criticism doesn't help the work being done. And that's why, traditionally, these threads have had companion threads for critiques and random notes. Which is exactly what happened with the Poetry thread.

So, what's the problem?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:57 / 09.04.02

I'd go with the constructive criticism thing. "uR pOeM sUkZ" is ultimately as useless as "Ooooh, I just looooooved it!"

12:30 / 11.04.02

"It's a little different here."

Well, no, it's not, really. At least, it shouldn't be.

This is a conversation board. Conversation entails response. As conversation relates to art, said response may be either direct criticism or art of one's own. Art in response to other art may be complementary or diametrical: the response may be direct or oblique: the referent may be obvious or veiled; but in the end the works engage in a dialogue with each other.

Collective works like "Morrison Moore" constitute a conversation unto themselves: people respond to each other's posts with riffs of their own that continue the theme.

A poetry thread where the works are freestanding, where there's no attempt for the pieces to interact or comment on each other, and where criticism is actively discouraged—that's not a conversation. That's a series of monologues.

There's more to dialogue than simply talking and waiting to talk.

Barbelith is a place for conversation. Things that are not conversation belong elsewhere.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

14:23 / 11.04.02

So, can i post criticism in this thread...about this thread?

14:32 / 11.04.02

Sho nuf.

14:58 / 11.04.02

Originally posted by Flux

"I don't see the point of having a one-way communication here"

Originally posted by Jack Fear

"Barbelith is a place for conversation. Things that are not conversation belong elsewhere"

I guess my vision of Barbelith is a little different from yours. Ah well.

Zoom.

16:20 / 11.04.02

"you suck" is bullshit (read: mean, disrespectful, and certainly doesnt encourage creativity), and should be kept IN conversation. ripping into someone without any sort of constructive analysis or suggestions, anything, does not belong in this forum. its like going to headshop and saying that an idea sucks and nothing more, youll be expected to elaborate and rightly so

Regrettable Juvenilia

02:45 / 12.04.02

Hmm, but then again, which is harder for a writer to take - a simple "you suck", or a detached, objective, accurate and detailed blow-by-blow account of why that work in particular really is quite unredeemably bad?

Matthew Fluxington

03:27 / 12.04.02

I guess my vision of Barbelith is a little different from yours. Ah well.

Well, how do you see it? As a large captive audience for a constant stream of wince-inducing exhibitionism?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

07:27 / 12.04.02

And bingo...another piece of useless nastiness. Gosh, I'm so proud of you for speaking your mind.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:20 / 12.04.02

Note: I wasn't talking about any work in particular, I'm just observing that when people say "go on, be merciless, rip this to shreds, tell me exactly what's wrong with it", nobody really wants or expects people to actually do that. If someone did, in a manner that avoided personal attacks and so-called "useless nastiness", what would be the response?

11:45 / 12.04.02

Nick... Unless you want to turn the creation into the aunt with Turner Syndrome in the Barbe-family, I think we should try to keep the standards here as high as they are in the Head Shop, for instance. It can get really depressing if you've just read some threads over there and decide to... mmm... read some of barbe-poetry in the sequence, for instance.
What is advisable is that people do like Captain Zoom, and warn everybody that a certain poem or thread is a personal effort which goal is only self amusement, self indulgency. The poster might want just to hone hir skill's, which is fine.
But if you come with a poem or piece of fiction to show everybody else, it's implicit you want commentary and critics. I still don't understand why it doesn't happen more often (yeah, I know criticism has to have *some* workable material to be executed, which is not often the case).
And general nastiness/rudeness is unavoidable. If someone decides it's time to show The Right Path to the rest of the sheep, in an aggressive, rude manner, the best procedure would be treat it like noise and ignore it. What you think?

11:55 / 12.04.02

Gosh Flux, you're almost as bad as Billy.

Evil.

12:33 / 12.04.02

But he's got a point, hasn't he?

There's an implicit "Shut up and listen" behind the "no criticism" policy which seems to me antithetical to the board's spirit of open discourse.

Frankly, my biggest disappointment with the Creation is that single-author works offered for group savagement rarely-if-ever generate any useful criticism, constructive or otherwise. What the Creation is good for is group work—writing as a game. And games require participation, interaction, dialogue—all things that can't happen in a vacuum.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:48 / 12.04.02

Hooom - I feel a bit bad about this, because Autopilot asked me. To my face. Where my wife sleeps. Where my kids play with their toys. To critique his thing, and I still haven;t, partly because my prose criticism is pretty old, and partly because the level of criticism *does* tend to depress the Hay-ull out of me. Plus plus, there is a certain "you have nonced up my inner child" reaction to criticism danger...

12:49 / 12.04.02

Jack, I admit that I started it as an exercise for myself, but others did, and still do, participate. The Daily Poetry is a group exercise when it's working well, and perhaps it's not anymore. I still don't see why that makes it any different from the other creative group threads that don't recieve criticism midway.

Anyway, fuck it, I'm done there. Between the insults and the completely empty criticism, there's no point anymore. I thought it would be fun, it was for a bit, and now it's not.

Evil.

13:31 / 12.04.02

Another thing occurs. I won't pull names out here, but has anyone who is complaining that there's no criticism in Daily Poetry actually wanted to post any critcism there? Or is it all just semantics? If we could go back in time and someone had posted some crit. there before all this Billy Corgan nonsense, I think I would have been overjoyed. In response to your question, Flyboy, I find it much easier to take real, constructive criticism than off-the-cuff nonsense. At least that tells me that the person offering it has read the piece and thought about it, regardless of whether they liked it or not, and invested enough in me personally to suggest what I could do to improve.
I never wanted this thread for a personal forum of my brilliance.

There's things in there that I wrote that I know are shit. I did it so I could get used to writing again, and thought it would be a fun exercise for anyone else who wanted to participate. But no one ever offered criticism, for which I assure you I would have been grateful. All I got was a witless response from Billy-fucking-Corgan, who unintentionally sparked this whole debate. The only time I did manage to get some feedback on a poem was in the Poetrial thread, from the Applepicker, and it was great. The mixing of ideas and suggestions is what this whole Creation thing is about for me, not arguing about whether or not you can do something here. If you do something that no one agrees with, it'll eventually disappear.
Now, those who wish to criticise my, or other peoples, works in the Daily Poetry forum, do so. I, for one, welcome it. If there's a specific work you want to criticise, or one I would like criticism on, use the Poetrial, or PM the person who wrote it. But for god's sake stop arguing about it.

Evil.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

13:52 / 12.04.02

I have no desire to turn into anyone's aunt.

However...

Perhaps I'm harking back to an age which does not exist, but I think that in 2002 I've seen far more spikey, pointless animosity in the Creation than ever before. I feel that sometimes things get stomped when they should get fed. I feel that sometimes people forget that the overall point of this forum must be to produce something, not to knock down bad things, and that even criticism should be aimed at building, not stripping away.

However...

It's not my board, nor my forum. So you guys have to decide what to do.

PS...

I'm delighted to see Jack posting again, and I hope we'll see more of his w&w.

Hi, Jack.

14:08 / 12.04.02

I think you'd make a lovely aunt, Nick. Especially with you knowledge of the Swiss (tongue/dialect/language).

(Tara thinks that's pretty fine, young man)

Evil.

The Apple-Picker

14:15 / 12.04.02

"If someone did, in a manner that avoided personal attacks and so-called "useless nastiness", what would be the response?" --Confusion perhaps.

I think part of the criticism problem is that those who have the level of education, experience, etc. to credit them as skilled critics don't offer up critiques. And that a complete critique from them would obliterate a piece.

So maybe a good goal would be for guidance from critic-teachers, with an expectation of improvement--not perfection.

The man most knowledgable in poetry I've ever met was an incredible snob, who could be vicious, but only obliterated the work of those who were too arrogant to express a desire to learn.

14:49 / 12.04.02

I think that in 2002 I've seen far more spikey, pointless animosity in the Creation

just in the creation? I think theres an overall tone of nastiness pervading the whole place

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