On the Crap/Quality Ratio

This blog receives poetry as I write it - I mentioned in an earlier post that I often write the sonnets like a text message on my phone - without further editing than what I do while composing the first draft. That means that the sonnets on this blog are irregular (as you have probably noticed if you read it) in their themes, style, form, and, most importantly for this post, their quality. This raises the obvious question of how the production of good pieces and bad pieces relate to each other, and particularly the measurement I am interested in here, which deserves a better name than the crap/quality ratio.

In the production of any art there are going to be duds as well as successes. Without the fearlessness that allows duds to be created and shown to the world, successful art is unlikely to be produced; and certainly it would not be without the desire to create art, which can, perhaps regrettably, produce bad art as well as good. The question then is not whether crap will come out, but how much crap, and how much quality will be created as its byproduct.

Personally, I am willing to accept a very high ratio of crap to quality; I am not sure if I am a fundamentalist of the sort who believes that a single piece of quality art justifies infinite crap, but I might be, and I'm certainly close. Total duds can be ignored; quality is rare enough that it should be prized. The only hesitation I have in this regard is the context in which the art is being presented; if anyone is being required to engage with the art, subjecting people to an endless stream of unavoidable crap becomes more questionable. In any medium - including this blog - in which there is choice involved in the consumption of the art, I think it is clear that breadth of room for art to develop is to be preferred to a low crap/quality ratio.

Besides, there are two allied concerns with any attempt to restrict what art is presented: subjectivity, and flawed art. Art appreciation is subjective, so any great restriction of its dissemination based entirely on the quality of the art involved may be an unfair imposition of one party's subjective values on another party (I do not here include not passing art on to others because you did not enjoy it; I mean institutionalized or universal barriers to dissemination based on quality - the crucial distinction, I think, is between being not required to disseminate and being not permitted to do so).

But art can also fall between a total dud piece of crap and a high-quality masterpiece. Art with flaws but also with quality must be allowed, and too great of a restriction on non-masterpiece production is, in my opinion, a mistake. If there is any cutoff at all, it should be as close to total dud level as possible.

To turn back to this blog and the question of editing with which we began, I do not intend to say I do not believe in editing. It can improve art; it can be crucially important to art. But equally I do not believe that art should be presented only in an edited or polished form. There are distinctly rough drafts here, and some which seem more polished; at some point in the future I may even present edited versions of sonnets which have appeared before. But part of the purpose of this blog, and a major part of my writing process, is the presentation of poetry immediately upon its conception and production; and I would appreciate any and all comments that might help me identify where I fall on the continuum of the crap/quality ratio.