THE CAR THAT REMAINED NEW

On any objective grounds, not to mention when judged against your stated criteria of what a writing has to have in order to be poetry, this submission is a disaster.

1.  It is prose in line breaks

2.  It has no recognizable, let alone a consistent, meter.

3.  Its subject – that a man is so in love with his car that he keeps it in good nick – is pedestrian, not grand.

4.  Its parts do not cohere with,  let alone illustrate,  what you've stated in its opening lines is going to be the subject that the rest of this submission will be dealing with – i.e. how Tim's car is **like** the picture of Dorian Gray that Basil Hallward painted of him.

5. It is ill-informed.

6. It is poorly written.


1.  Here’s what we get when we take away your line breaks:

“Tim's car was like the strange portrait Dorian had. He lived his life and passed long time [sic]  but remained young. He saw his picture bear his sins and get** so old** as what he did showed that he was a libertine.

Dorian loathed his portrait but Tim loved his car. Tim was upright and gave it all his love and care. He loved it as he had a heart **so pure** and kind, and so his car remained quite new and seemed **so fair**.

Dorian stabbed his portrait but Tim washed his car, and they both thought of the old time that they had passed, but both of them seemed quite surprised how time could dress the portrait and the car to suit each person's heart.”

I.e. a series of imageless, declarative sentences.

2.    It’s clear when one scans it that its sentences are lines that are not set out rhythmically or with any degree of musicality.

3.  That a man prizes something he owns, not to mention that what he prizes still looks new even though it is old is hardly an indication of his moral character.

4.  Your opening lines create the expectation that you are going to be outlining just how Tim’s car is like the portrait of Dorian Gray that Basil Hallward painted for him.  Instead, you go on to speak about who Dorian was rather than – as you should have done – the resemblance between a particular car and the portrait which was originally a thing of beauty. Moreover, for Tim’s car to be like what happened to Dorian’s portrait, you’d have to say how Tim got ugly while the car remained beautiful.  What you are really saying is that Tim’s car was wholly **unlike**  Dorian’s portrait since the car never became ugly.

5.  When you say that Dorian loathed his portrait (actually “Picture”), you misrepresent what Wilde wrote about how and why and when Dorian came to do so

“Dorian ...  passed listlessly in front of his picture and turned towards it. When he saw it he drew back, and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time. He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of his words. The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before."

So at first, he actually loved it.

But then:

"Basil Hallward’s compliments had seemed to him to be merely the charming exaggeration of friendship. He had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them. They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full reality of the description flashed across him. Yes, there would be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. The scarlet would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth.”

As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him like a knife and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. His eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist of tears. He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon his heart...

How sad it is!” murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!” ...

I know, now, that when one loses one’s good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.”

So at first glance, he loved it.  But shortly afterward -- and long before he became evil -- he came to loathe it not because it was ugly, but because it was beautiful and brought to his mind that in a short time **he** would never again be like what he saw there.

And Dorian was NOT “surprised how time could dress the portrait ... to suit” his heart [actually, mirror the state of his soul], since he knew long before he took a knife to it what the portrait was showing him and that it was **not** time that “dressed the portrait” into the series of horrid spectacles it became,  but his deeds.

So once again, you show yourself as one who does not seem to know what the source of your presentation actually says.

6.  Do you really think that repeating words like “heart” and "passed" in a short piece and using the comparative “so” without completing the comparison it introduces,  is good writing?

Do you think that solecistic phrases like    

  He lived his life and passed long time  

   they both thought of the old time that they had passed

make sense?

And this line

“He saw his picture bear his sins and get so old as what he did showed that he was a libertine”

is fallacious (and poorly written) in that it was the image in the portrait that Dorian glanced at after he had lived for some time since it was first painted that showed Dorian what his soul was like.  What it showed him was not what he would be like when he was old, but what “ the leprosies of sin” had done to his soul” and looked like,  against which “ The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful.”   And what the portrait showed him was that he was far more than a libertine. It was that he had “worshiped” himself “too much” and was not only someone who had used his influence to ruin others' lives, but was a murderer.

1- When l write about a story used by another writer, l take the main idea and modify it according to the purpose l use in my poem. You can see that very clearly in the third line of my poem. Please read this line in my poem. This makes everything you wrote about Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray concerning my poem invalid.
2- According to using a car to compare with the picture, l try to show how the car remained new because of the difference between the owners of the picture and that of the car. The picture was getting old because its owner was a libertine, whereas the car remained new because its owner was good. Please, consider the change l use in the picture of Dorian.

1- When l write about a story used by another writer, l take the main idea and modify it according to the purpose l use in my poem.

But you are not so much writing about a story used {??) by another author as you are writing about why a car did not change its appearance over time.  And you flatter yourself if you think that you've used well what Wilde wrote.  

"You can see that very clearly in the third line of my poem. Please read this line in my poem. This makes everything you wrote about Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray concerning my poem invalid."

It does?  How?

In any case, I didn't write about Dorian Gray.  I quoted relevant passages from the novel.   Given this, the question then becomes: "Is your modification true to what Wilde wrote?  And if it is not,  then why make a misrepresentation of what Wilde wrote concerning Gray and what Gray's portrait ended up showing central to your (false and fallacious) comparison?".  You end up making anyone who knows what Wilde actually said about these things have good reason to say "J-Z doesn't know what he's talking about". And his intended point is way off base as well as ill-informed".

2- According to using a car to compare with the picture

Er... what?

"I try to show how the car remained new because of the difference between the owners of the picture and that of the car. The picture was getting old because its owner was a libertine,"

But the image in the picture did not get old -- i.e. reflect what Dorian would look like when he was no longer young.  It became hideous, reflecting how corrupt his soul was becoming (or had become).  And it did so because Dorian  (who had transferred his soul into it ) increasingly became someone who indulged in cruelties to others, had no qualms about ruining the lives of others, and who engaged in murder, NOT because he was a hedonist.  So once again you open yourself up -- and with good reason -- to the charge of not knowing what you are talking about.

"whereas the car remained new because its owner was good."

But you say that the car remained "new"  [like new?]  because its owner took pains to see to its upkeep.  So it was his **actions** toward the car, not the fact that he was upright,  that was the cause of his car's appearance of agelessness?  If moral integrity was a determinant of the condition of what one prizes,  then Dorian's residence would have been a slum.  But Wilde tells us that it was always immaculate.  His character had nothing to do with this.  
  
"Please, consider the change l use in the picture of Dorian."

Leaving aside the fact that the meaning of this sentence of yours is obscure [it needed to have been written "the change I've made to the description of the picture of Dorian" to make sense and to convey what you apparently were intending to say], why should anyone take into consideration "the change [you] use in the picture of Dorian", especially since the "change" you "use" in describing the character of the picture of Dorian is not the change it displayed?

Moreover, for the car to be like the painting, it would have to have resembled the image of its owner and to be capable -- because of a transference of the soul of its owner into it and the essence of the car into its owner -- of undergoing over time a change in its appearance.   But according to you, the reason the car's appearance does not change over time has nothing to do with the character of its owner or how he acts toward others,  but to the fact that he acted directly and mechanically upon the car.

So your comparison is faulty from the get go..

But more importantly,  my message to you was not only to point this out, but to highlight why your submission was not poetry, especially given that it does not adhere to **your stated criteria** for what a composition has to have to be poetry, and that it was poorly written.  

I note with great interest that you have done nothing to address these matters, let alone to demonstrate that what I said is in any way off the mark.  Typical.

Cue the "nothing you said is worth answering" remark as well as the ad homined and red herringed reply.

Baldwin, you never try to understand what the other person is saying. It's useless to write to you.

"Baldwin, you never try to understand what the other person is saying. It's useless to write to you."  
 
Oh,  I try.  But what prevents me from understanding what you have said is that you rarely write anything that is well-phrased enough to BE understandable, let alone that the way you write rarely conveys what you think you are saying.  
 
And just as I predicted -- you replied to my message with an ad hominemed response that dodges and plays the "poor poor me, the aggrieved poet"  card to excuse you from dealing with any of the points I raised about why your submission is a poorly worded and conceptually incoherent is dull and factually incorrect, ill-informed prose ramble.

If you want me to answer you, first write briefly as all the other good poets in this and other groups do when they write their comments, or else l will never answer you and you will write to yourself. It's enough . I can't read this lengthy ... any more.

If you want me to answer you, first write briefly as all the other good poets in this and other groups do when they write their comments, or else l will never answer you and you will write to yourself. It's enough . I can't read this lengthy ... any more.  
 
Who are the other good poets you speak of?  And do they actually give you criticism on ** the way you set out a theme**  and do or do not do so with any degree of literary and linguistic felicitousness? Or is what they give you fairly complimentary but essentially vacuous statements about how they liked the message of a particular submission?  Who here has actually articulated with some degree of substance how and why the way you write does or does not display poetic art?  
 
And shouldn't the length of one's comments be determined by what needs to be said if one is to be thorough in making one's case, not by your limited capacity for reading explicit and evidence-supported arguments?  You say (falsely) that you want honest criticism of your submissions -- which I take to mean that you want it to be as thorough as is possible and necessary to deal fully and adequately with the question of why or why not your submissions display the characteristics of what people like Eliot, Auden, and other acknowledged practitioners of poetic art have noted is what something must possess to be good and effective poetry, let alone the ones you have stated a writing has to have to even be poetry at all.  Indeed, instead of complaining that my messages to you are too lengthy (let alone lengthy ...), you should be thanking me for giving you as much salient critical detail as I do.  
 
In any case,  this is yet another poor excuse for not engaging with the arguments I made that demonstrated that your submission was not poetry, let alone good poetry,  but poorly written, imageless,  and conceptually confused prose in line breaks.    
 
Given your track record of consistently avoiding dealing with hard and legitimate questions about whether your claims to an unparalleled power to write well are justified by the way you write,  I guess that this is exactly what I should have expected from you.

You are writing to yourself.

"You are writing to yourself."

Obviously not if you are responding to what I wrote!

And you are unable to deal with the evidence that you are not as good at writing as you think you are, let alone that on your own criteria of what makes a writing good poetry, your latest submission is poorly written, ill-informed, prose in line breaks

Even if this is true, how does that "fact" invalidate the things I noted as showing **in the light of your own criteria of what a writing has to have to be poetry**  (i.e.,  a deep and meaningful subject that is set out in language that is rhythmical and beautiful) that your submission is not poetry but is instead poorly written and conceptually incoherent prose in line breaks?

Thank youj very much for your brief comment. I think you have begun to understand me.

Yes,  I have understood you as being someone who works from the fallacious assumption that the length of a post is the sole determinant not only for whether or not a post is essentially crap, but whether it's worth reading?

You ask me to be succinct in stating why I have come to the conclusion that your piece is not poetry, let alone good poetry.  OK.  I'll do this.  And the way I'll do this is to follow your lead and subject it to the particular questions **you yourself** have stated (however implicitly)  must be answered positively to be able to say that a writing is poetry, namely,    
    
1. Is it something that is grounded in a deep and meaningful theme/idea?    
  
2. Is the “style” style in which the idea is set out “beautiful” (which, presumably, means that at the very least that it is coherent and enthralling in the way it sets out that idea, not to mention that it actually then goes on to develop it says its opening lines say it is going to show and displays a mastery of poetic art in the way it is worded and structured)?    
   
3. Do its lines display a recognizable, consistent, and engaging rhythm?    
   
Taking these in reverse order, the answers to these questions are “no, they don't”, “no,  its style is not beautiful”, especially given how ragged and unimaginative the wording of your piece's lines are and how devoid of figures of speech and concrete images and appeals to the senses the whole thing is, and “no,  the idea that over the years a car shows no signs of how old it actually is because its owner (who has not transferred his soul into it as Dorian Gray did into the portrait that an artist had made of him) is ‘upright’”  is hardly a deep and meaningful one, let alone one that is logically sustainable or true to life.  In fact, it is quite absurd and therefore likely to push readers right out of your submission instead of admiring it.    
   
Given this, even you –  if you’d for once be honest with yourself instead of being hypocritical – would have to say that your piece is NOT poetry.

Are you writing about your poetry? HA HA HA. I am joking.

And, once again you dodge actually speaking to what I wrote.  Have I misrepresented your standards for determining whether a writing is poetry?   If not, are you claiming that what you write should not be evaluated by these standards?

These are yes or no questions. Your failure to answer them with what they require ( i.e., a yes or a no) will be good evidence that you are afraid to answer them.

You have returned to your boring old style. Do you think that you are in a position to write all these instructions which you have never applied on your own poetry?

"You have returned to your boring old style"  
 
Have I?  And if I have,  so what?.  You've done nothing to show, as you are obliged to do,  that this style -- whatever it is --  is not warranted if you think or claim it isn't.  
   
"Do you think that you are in a position to write all [??] these instructions [???] which you have never applied on [to?] your own poetry?  
   
The "instructions" are yours, not mine.  And they are not many.  More importantly, since you've not only made them in a public forum,  but claimed that they are the correct and best way for anyone (including you) to evaluate whether or not something is poetry,  anyone is in a position not only to quote them, but is obliged to use them to evaluate whether what you write deserves a positive or a negative assessment.    
 
Or are you now saying that your standards are NOT good ones for determining whether a writing is poetry and should NOT be used as guides for answering the question of whether something that someone has posted here is worth regarding as such?  
   
And what's your evidence that when I write I have "never" tried to abide by your particular standards of what features a writing has to display to be poetry?  
   
Moreover, even if you are correct in your claim,  how does it show that my claims of what your present post lacks are incorrect?  After all,  the issue here is NOT how I write but whether when your submission is judged by **your own standards** of what characteristics a writing has to have in order to be poetry, it is indeed poetry.  
   
Do you have any evidence or rational and articulated arguments (not unsubstantiated declarations) that my judgment in this regard is wrong?    
   
Cue the crickets.

Let me approach what I have been asking you to respond to in another way:

Yes or no,  do you believe that your submission is something that is grounded in (and displays) a deep and meaningful (not to mention true to life) theme/idea    
 
Yes or no,  do you believe that, despite the literary and linguist infelicities and conceptual problems I have demonstrated your submission possesses,  it is set out in a "style" that is "beautiful",  (i.e. ,  that it displays an awe inspiring  mastery of poetic art in the way it is worded and structured)?    
 
Yes or no,  do you claim that the lines of your submission are cast in  a readily recognizable, consistent, and engaging rhythm?

Remember that these questions arise from  accepting as true what YOU have claimed to be indisputable,  namely, that the application of YOUR standards  of what a writing has to have in order for it to be considered poetry to things submitted here is the best and most useful way to evaluate whether something is or is not poetry.  Remember, too,  that you have employed them not only to say that my submissions are not poems but that I know nothing about how to write poetry.   So what is good for the goose has to be, unless one is a hypocrite, good for the gander.

Cue the ad hominimed and/ or red herringed response instead of direct answers to my questions or the playing of the unsubstantiated claim that my questions are not worth answering.

Baldwin, please, try to understand that l have no time to read your lengthy, boring comments. If you write briefly, l read it. If you don't, l am very sorry.

And yet another dodge of answering my yes or no questions and of you showing how and why my claim that on your own grounds for evaluating whether something is or is not poetry, this submission of yours is not is off the mark.  It's quite clear that you have done this is because you do not want to apply your standars for what is and is not poetry to your submission since this would show indisputably that I am correct in noting that your submission is not poetry,  but poorly written and conceptually confused, fallacy filled prose in line breaks.

Moreover,  I DiD write briefly.  And you not only beg the question when you claim that my messages are boring but fallaciously assume that even if they are, the questions or remarks I pose in them are not warranted given the way you write and should not be answered.

I will never answer you at all unless you write briefly.

Yes or no,  do you believe that your submission is something that is grounded in (and displays) a deep and meaningful (not to mention true to life) theme/idea?
 

Briefly.

I did what you asked.  But you have not done what you said you'd do.

You are without integrity.

I’m wondering if you think that the following is not good poetry.  I note that you’ll be contradicting yourself if you say it’s not.  For after all, it fulfills all of the requirements that you have stated a writing must have in order to be poetry in that (1) its subject is a deep and meaningful one, (2) its  style is “beautiful” in that has no linguistic flaws,  it’s structured well, and there’s nothing in it that might cause a reader to think “I have no idea what Baldwin is trying to say”or “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about” or “he doesn’t know how to use English well”, and (3)  it has a recognizable and consistently regular rhythm.  

Tim’s car was quite unlike
the portrait made
by English artist Hallward’s hand
of the dandy Dorian Gray.

The car did not in any way
display the character or likeness
of its owner’s inner self
as Gray’s stored picture came to do
(because he gave his soul to it)

since what the auto did depict
was not the moral righteousness
and rectitude that Tim possessed
and which in him remained
all through
his mortal body’s ineluctable decline
that’s due to what is done to men
by ever circling, culling tides of passing time.

but only that,  

despite the fact  
that it was forced to spend its years
enduring wear and tear
upon the open road,

and then because of nothing else
besides Tim’s great mechanic’s skill
the full proficiency of which did not
depend upon, or rise up from the fact,
or in his  world  require
that he be one who’s always without sin,

its aspect  never came to show
the signs of age

Three brief questions:

How does a man’s moral rectitude cause his old car – into which he has not transferred his soul – to never appear as old?

Is bodily agelessness a characteristic or feature, let alone a result, of  righteousness?

Do those who are morally upright never age?

It seems to me that you don't understand my poem at all. That surprises me very much, Baldwin, because l think that you know English well though you aren't good at grammar. When you understand my poem, you don't ask such silly, divergent questions not related to the subject of the poem at all.

You beg the question when you claim that my questions are silly and "divergent"  (from what may I ask?) . My questions are directly related to the truth and the comprehensibility and the soundness of the logic of what you claim as true in your submission.  For unless Tim had poured his soul into his car, as Dorian did to his portrait, his car would not -- not to mention could not -- show what his true character was like.  Moreover, what the car should have shown if it WAS like Dorian's portrait in its ability to show what Dorian's character had become was NOT agelessness, but moral uprightness. since, according to you,  THAT, not agelessness,  was the essence of Tim's character.

And if I did not understand what you think you said in your submission,  it's because you did not actually say it.  You did NOT note what you should have noted given what you state in your opening lines what your submission is going to be about,  namely, how and why Tim's car and Dorian's portrait were alike,  Instead of writing about how THEY  were things that had the capacity to reveal what their owner's true character was, you go on to write about a different subject altogether --  who Dorian was.  Moreover, in order to make your highly disputable point that a virtuous life results in a  long-cherished thing retaining the way it appeared when it was brand new, but that a libertine style life results in something that once displayed how young the libertine once was,  becoming a thing that displays him as aged, you have to misrepresent what your source material says in regards to the substance of Dorian's life and character and what the change in his portrait's image was.  This puts a reader off from wanting to understand what the "message" of your submission was.

In any case,  your message above is yet another dodge of the questions I asked you which are not dependent on whether or not I have understood your submission.  And in doing this yet again you show yourself again to be a man without honour.

"It seems to me that you don't understand my poem at all. "

Let's assume that your submission IS a poem, despite the fact that the application of the standards that you yourself use to determine whether a composition is one shows that it is not.   What was it that I (seemingly) didn't understand?

Cue either crickets or an abusive response to my question that does not in any way provide what I am asking for but instead will be something that will state why I don't deserve, and will not revcieve an honest answer.

If you want me to read what you write, write something brief and reasonable, or l leave to you to enjoy reading what you have written.

I did write something brief (and since it was based on one of your criteria for what a composition has to have in order for it to be poetry) it was also reasonable.

That you have yet again dodged it (and labeled it with an ad hominem)  shows again that you are a man without integrity.  

Can you read what you have written? I am sure you can't read this nonsense.

"If you want me to read what you write, write something brief and reasonable, or l [SIC I'll]  leave [SIC it] to you to enjoy reading what you have written."

Here's something brief  and (unless you are now rejecting the value and legitimacy of one of your own criteria for determining  whether a composition is or is not poetry) entirely reasonable to ask you.:

Yes or no,  do you claim that the lines of your submission above are cast in a readily recognizable, consistent, and engaging rhythm?

Why don't you criticize other poets, Baldwin? I am sure they will not answer you.

Yes or no,  do you claim that the lines of your submission above are cast in a readily recognizable, consistent, and engaging rhythm?

I'm not sure how my supposed not criticizing the work of other posters here has anything to do with whether my criticisms of your submissions are off the mark,  but I am sure that you will not tell me why you think this is the case, let alone that you'd ever be responsible and honorable enough to give readers here articulate and evidenced-based reasons to think they are.  But to counter your unsubstantiated red-herring claim, I note that I HAVE criticized the work of other posters here (as well as elsewhere).  And your certainty about what they will do (or have done) when I've done so is as unfounded as you are without integrity --  since they have answered me and more than once thanked me for my remarks.

In any case,  how does your message show that my questions to you are silly and unreasonable, let alone that you are an honorable man?

I did what you asked me to do, and you respond with petulance.

I need to make one more remark about how you've had to  rape and misrepresent your source material in order to support the truth of your moralistic claim that being a libertine would not , and could not,  ever result in something old still looking , despite its years, as if it had never aged

You do this in your statement  "both of them seemed quite surprised how time could dress
the portrait and the car to suit each person's heart."  

First of all, according to Wilde, it was NOT **time** that caused Dorian's portrait to "suit? (?? actually "mirror"] his "heart".  And leaving aside the fact that according to Wilde,  what was affected was Dorian's **soul**not his heart,   what Wilde notes was the cause of it being affected was specifically  Dorian's cruelties to others, as well as his unrepentant debauchery, his lies,  and his engaging in murder that did so.  So in saying what you said,  you are likely to drive, if you have not already driven,  your readers who have read Wilde's book right **out** of your submission instead of insuring what skilled writers do -- drive their readers **into** what he/she writes.

Secondly, and also according to Wilde,  Dorian was NOT surprised at how his actions caused his portrait to mirror the state of his soul.  He figured this out calmly and rationally shortly after his portrait was finished and then went on with his cruelties not caring how they would affect the image there, noting with gladness that their weight would not affect his bodily appearance or age him.   So in saying this,  you are sure to give your readers who have read Wilde pause and to prompt them to say that you don't know what you are talking about.  

Please note that I say this not because I've misunderstood what you wrote in your lines, but because I paid close attention to their import.

Cue the petulant and off target response.

Here is something that I hope you'll be willing to do, especially since it seems clear that you think my assessment of your submission has no value and is way off the mark.  
 
Post it to the critical poetry site, Poetry Free For Alll to see if, after reading your piece, any of the good and well-informed poets who populate and post to that site disagree with my view that your piece is not poetry and certainly not good poetry.  
 
If anyone does disagree and, more importantly, goes on to note how well your submission is written and how its subject is a deep and meaningful one -- and thereby, by implication,  notes that  I am wrong in what I've said about your composition,  I will admit that  I have poor critical skills, that what I said about your piece was not in any way worth taking account of, and that I will cease writing to you about my perceptions of the way you write.  
 
And please do not tell me that you won't do this because you already know how good your piece is and how off base my comments on it are.  The purpose of you posting your composition to PFFA  would be to see if someone **other than yourself**,  someone who is well versed in what does and does not make a composition a poem (as, especially,  the moderators of, and many of the contributors to, that site are),  would say, if not also demonstrate by implication, how I've misunderstood your composition and that I don't know what I'm talking about in my claim that your piece is poorly written and conceptually confused prose in line breaks that does not come close to saying what you think you are saying in it.  
 
Here's the link to the website:   http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/  
 
I look forward to seeing that you won't respond to this message or,  that if you do, how you will beg off doing what I ask of you wherein you give less than predictable reasons for not doing so.

Baldwin sounds obsessed with your stuff yet too grumpy to suggest something constructive.
It does seem to me he overreacts and misses the point of the emotion that this piece carries.
moreover, what's the point to write lengthy comments that may ruin a person's will to write their heart
pointless to follow his advice

I love the scene and example you're advising, it provokes tender and positive emotions, good example to follow

Very dear Aaron,
You are a wonderful person. I think we can be very good friends because you understand me perfectly. Thank you very much, Aaron.