It's easier than -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. makes it sound. If "insults slammed at poets and poetry ... form no part of the quality of those people or their work," then what difference does it make if someone calls your poem, say, "a Fiat's-rooftop-displayed stool of incoherence"? None, unless you're a giant suck. Personally, I mostly agree with you. And I'd go on to say your typical meaningless dribbles of praise have nothing to do with useful criticism or evaluation, either. But you're not really having any of this 'it doesn't affect my true sense of self worth' stuff anyway. That's the whole fucking point. Besides, if I said what was horribly wrong with your poetry in an inoffensive way, you'd be forced to find some other reason to disregard my advice or, maybe, have yourself a good cry over it and then find yourself a new way to feel good about yourself like hanging with Goths or being a really great porn star specialised in interracial sodomy. Trust me, it's better for both of us this way.

You're both wrong. Imagine a beautifull statue, 50% of which is smeared in stools. The statue is in a boothe with a microphone connected. Every time someone praises the statue, a robot arm connected to a moist wipe removes 50% of the stools on the statue. Every time someone insults the statue, 50% of the statue that remains unstooled is enstooled. It is easy to see that the amount the piece is insulted or praised is intimately linked to its beauty. Unless you consider the people looking at the work and praising/insulting it, and the microphone, and the stool cannons, as just as much a part of the piece as the statue. In which case you'd need a meta-microphone, and a meta-audience, and a meta-stool cannon and a meta-moist wipe pointed at the audience. Meta-meta-wipes? Fuck off! Either way you fail.

Thank you.

(cracks whip) then get back in there and "beat" it up, damnit. lol.

I have to admit the beat got irregular, but I kept the offset lines for what beat there is.

See what I mean.

You're such a dim.

Thank you, that's true, but it's still pleasant to hear. I might add that insults slammed at poets and poetry (I'm speaking of others, not you) form no part of the quality of those people or their work. Calling someone dim, for example, or his poetry shit, has no relevance to useful criticism or evaluation.

If you love something, let it go. If it returns, it's yours. If not, it never was.