1 May 2004. The following suggestions for setting up a procedure for evaluating a person's stature as a poet will be dismissed by the stasguards as impractical and foolish, and--for once--they won't be completely wrong. I hope the suggestions will be worthwhile as a first step, though.

First off, I would have a list made of all the objectively-determinable ingredients any successful poem must have at least one of. There are those, needless to say, who will claim that no objectively-determinable ingredient of poetry exists. I, however, am going by the sane definition of "objectivity" as maximal reasonable focus on that which is in "the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers," as my Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has it. It needn't have to do only with the readily quantifiable, or that which requires special instruments other than a person's sensory equipment to identify. It needn't, in other words, be scientifically objective (though I believe it could be made so, but won't go into that here).

Some of the objectively-determinable ingredients of a successful poem, for me, are:

1 equaphors (my word for, to put it roughly, figures of speech)

2 fresh language

3 melodations (my word for auditory effects such as rhyme and alliteration)

4 pluraesthetic effects (or non-verbal extras such as color or mathematical expressions)

5 connections to archetypes (which would require a special side-list of archetypes)

6 absence of verbal cliches (a subjective but not-too-subjective category since most people with a serious interest in poetry learn to recognize the main cliches of the time fairly quickly)

7 adherence to standard grammar, orthography and semantics--or "clarity"

8 cultural allusions

9 focused coherence, or focused adherence to some readily identifiable ubergestalt (or whatever I called it in a recent entry here)

10 classiformularity (my term for having a classical or widely-approved form)

11 specific concrete details

12 ideas

Once a list is compiled and agreed upon, I suggest that the ratio of the occurences of each ingredient on it to the number of words, or syllables, or even letters, in each poem by the poet being evaluated be determined. Each ratio should be differently weight, some being more important than others. This will be very difficult because in so many cases no much more than a matter of opinion, but--ever the optimist--I believe reasonable people can finally agree closely enough that--for instance--metaphorical richness should count more than good rhymes.

Once a poet's main output has been rated, I would rate him on the basis of what an average poem of his scored, plus what his best poem scored, plus how many poems he had composed that were above what experience had shown to be a score only the very best poems attained. His over-all rating would be some kind of combination of the three scores.

I wouldn't have his score be the only thing determining whether he should get into some elite organization of poets, though, for I do agree that no mechanical rating system is close to perfect. There will be poets who can score high on any test of this sort, without really composing anything of value just as there are students who can score high on IQ tests and/or get the highest grades possible in classes without really being very bright. So I would continue having votes by other poets count a significant amount. But what other poets? Here's where my list of schools would come in. I would want every school to elect a representative, and have a vote of all the repesentatives taken. That representative's vote might be given a weight equal to the number of people in his school so that the larger schools would have a bigger say than the marginal ones, but he would be required to justify his vote in writing. I would also want votes to be more sophisticated than yes/no--each having some value between zero and a hundred, say. Some combination of a candidate's percentage of votes and test score should be required for him to qualify for entrance into the elite organization (or for some prize, etc.).

I would certainly not require every organization to follow my procedure, but at least one!

Again, let me emphasize, I don't feel I've presented a blueprint for improving the selection process of an Academy of American Poets, just sketched a start toward such a blueprint. So: please send my your comments and suggestions.