Eratosphere, a Poetry Forum to Avoid

By Editor |

Monday, June 17, 2024

Eratosphere, a Poetry Forum to Avoid

Poetry forums on the internet are mostly dying.  The reason seems to be that social media platforms have supplanted them.  If someone writes a poem and wants critique, he can post it on Facebook or Reddit, and people will leave their comments.  However, I have never found the format of social media platforms to be suitable for critique.  What’s needed is dedicated “bulletin board” software (like that made by phpBB).  Some poetry forums now have so few members that there aren’t enough to keep the forums going.  I have been to forums where one lone poet posts poem after poem, never receiving a response.

Another reason poetry forums are dying is poor administration and restrictive rules.  The owners/moderators of many forums can be overly aggressive in monitoring and censoring the members and their posts.  Many owners/moderators want everything to be polite and “copacetic”.  On other forums, the moderators are control-freaks who want every small rule to be followed to the letter.  The forum Pig Pen, which was very active years ago before the original owner died (and was a raucous place where members were outspoken), is now controlled by a woman who deletes any post that breaks even the smallest rule.  If you are an adult who treasures your freedom of speech, having your posts deleted for minor reasons is insulting.

Eratosphere is the poetry forum run by the Able Muse, a poetry publication that publishes actual books and magazines (which is becoming increasingly rare; much publishing is now done on the internet).  Eratosphere isn’t dying like the rest of the forums, although the number of members is much lower than it was two decades ago.  The problem with Eratosphere is that it has become a clique of snobbish intellectuals.  The atmosphere there is confrontational.  Many members pride themselves on their “take no prisoners” critiques.  Whereas some moderators on other forums try to nip any hostility in the bud, it is tolerated on Eratosphere and even encouraged.  This can be especially discouraging to new members.  Indeed, discouraging new members seems to be a game that the long-time members play.

I have been a member of Eratosphere four times, and each time I was driven off by nastiness.  One of those times, amazingly, the nastiness came from the moderator herself, who openly ridiculed a poem I posted.  In each instance, my self-confidence took a hit.  The nasty people who mistreated me would say that a poor poet shouldn’t have confidence.  Whether that’s true or not isn’t the point.  Confidence is needed to write well, and at the age of 74, I am still trying to improve my writing.

It took me a while to figure out exactly what was happening on Eratosphere.  My fourth attempt to survive there brought everything into focus.  When a new member joins Eratosphere, the new member must critique fifteen other poems before he or she can post a poem of his own – and the critiques must be substantial, not just a sentence or two.  This gives the long-time members many opportunities to size up the new member, and to develop resentments towards the new member if he or she seems over-confident.  Remember, these are jealous intellectuals, and the last thing any intellectual can stand is another intellectual who is in any way smart.

There is a pattern on Eratosphere which plays itself out over and over again.  Once the new member has posted fifteen critiques and posts his or her first poem, the hazing continues as the entire group weighs in, criticizing every aspect of the poem.  At first, a few comments may be slightly positive; but if the new member doesn’t react in an obsequious way, the comments soon become vicious and insulting.  The last two times I became a member, that is what happened.  People were so rude that I lost my temper, and for that I was banned.  In other words, the last two times I was on the forum they saw only one of my poems before kicking me off.  But the last time I was there, I finally got to tell them off, and that was a great satisfaction.  Here is the text of my comment, with a few corrections to typos and such:

A site called Autumn Sky Poetry Daily started its own forum a year ago, and I decided to try it out (the forum seems to be gone now).  After a couple weeks, someone who identified himself as an Eratosphere member started participating.  It was as if a serial killer had walked in among the babies and mothers at a day-care center.  He started slashing at everyone and everything.  He had nothing positive to say about any poem that he critiqued.  He disassembled the half-decent poem I had posted, attacking every aspect of it, even down to its most basic elements.  After destroying the neighborhood, he finally left, leaving the rest of us with PTSD.

Eratosphere is a clique of jealous intellectuals who don’t want to admit new members.  New members must be hazed.  There is a pattern here.  The first critiques of the first poem posted by the new member will have enough positive in them that the new member feels slightly helped.  But then the all-negative critiques begin (thank you, Julie Steiner).  The new member will start to push back, intuitively understanding that the purpose of the crits is not actually to help.  The new member’s resistance allows the rest of you to show your true colors, and the serious attacks begin.  The bad cops then come in (thank you, Jim Moonan) and do most of the dirty work.  Having been insulted to the point of reacting, everyone concludes that the new member must go.  Once the new member is banned and the “threat” is over, the rest of you relax and go back to posting your own poems, which, based on what I’ve seen, are not really that good overall.  The astonishing thing is that none of you realizes what you are doing.

That’s not to say that you never accept new members, but the new members you accept are the masochists who never push back, who have no pride, who are willing to take their place at the bottom of the totem pole so that the older members will not feel threatened.  But poets without pride or ego rarely write anything great.  It takes ego to be great, and I’m not willing to sacrifice my ego to be a member here.  Because you won’t accept any new poet who has even a little ego, the overall quality of the poetry posted here never improves much.

I’ve improved my poem slightly – indeed, a FEW of the comments I got here were useful – but I’m not posting it because it isn’t substantially changed, and that will give you an excuse to attack all the more viciously.  It is more metrical than it was (actually, it was always mostly metrical, but not all of you people understand scansion), and I have rearranged some words and substituted others.  It’s still not the best thing I’ve written, but it will get published.

In a subsequent post I said this:

The 15 critiques to become a member is part of the hazing process. It was put in place to protect the older, more egotistical members. It needs to be changed. Of course, Alex Pepple is largely responsible for the atmosphere here, but I won't explain his involvement quite yet.

Now, I understand that my own comments came across as egotistical and condescending, but I was angry.  Also, that is the only kind of talk that these people understand.

Alex Pepple allows the hostile environment to continue.  He knows what is happening on his own forum.  I have heard that some members protect their memberships by paying money to the Able Muse, but I can’t confirm that.  Another member said that he read an exchange between a longtime member and Jayne Osborn, the administrator of the forum, in which they gloated about pushing new members off the site.  Again, I can’t confirm that.

If I had been allowed to stay on the forum, I would have continued to provide a good example to the others of how critiques should be done, as follows:

First, no one should critique a poem that he or she doesn’t like at least a little.  If a poem turns you off entirely, you should pass it by.

Second, it is important to praise what is good.  I’ll often start with something like, “I like the overall cadence of the language; you write in a natural voice which is pleasing”, or I may praise the poet for writing clearly.

Third, suggestions should be made on how the poem might be improved (in the opinion of the critic).  Those suggestions should be couched as opinions, not as absolute facts.  There needs to be an attitude of camaraderie in which everyone understands that we are all amateur poets and no one is perfect.

Eratosphere loses out by driving new members off the forum.  A critique forum should be a constructive place, not a dungeon where people are tortured.