Love and Criticism (@ Harriet)

here

"In terms of ‘negative criticism’ (so called), I rarely see the use of it. If it is to dismiss a work of literature/art as unvaluable/irrelevant, don’t we already do this by not attending it, or by not investing our desires and passions in it? It is so much work just to understand poetry/art (for works of art and poetry to become legible to one’s self) I have never understood why people would want to waste their energy on what does not interest them (what, that is, they do not love or desire). This problem goes back to Robert Duncan’s The H.D. Book where Duncan reiterates that the poet “goes where they are loved.” I think there is a lot of wisdom in this mantra of Duncan’s, and in the ways Duncan practiced criticism and scholarship besides his poetry."