Yesterday I went to a poetry workshop and read one of my poems that I had posted on this website. They had some good comments, but for the most part they tore my poem to pieces. I had not received any negative comments about the poem when it was posted on this website. I realized there's an extreme problem with the lack of criticism on Neopoet. We can't really have a poetry workshop if no one is willing to criticize anyone else. At some point , a decision was made that to be nice and polite to people is more important than making progress as poets. Quite frankly, I think that Neopoet has become much more of a social club than a poetry workshop. There's nothing wrong with social clubs, if that's really what people want to have here, but I don't really think that that's what people came here for. I think this problem needs to be confronted. It's nice to have a friendly atmosphere, but if the atmosphere is too friendly, are we really accomplishing anything?

Is there any point to having a poetry website where for the most part all we do is complement each other? Everyone says that Neopoet is a workshop, but I say in order to have a workshop you need to have criticism. A workshop without criticism is no workshop at all! I would like to know what the other members think about this.

Sincerely,

Michael Landau