I had these comments [on another site] about the last two lines in one of my poems:   WORD WEAVER   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.

However, I suspect the cliché-hounds will continue to hunt … for these are the days of whine and posers.   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.