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Woman emails to berate me for saying on my website that I dislike one of my poems - "whenever I read this remark, it makes me very cross". Well don't read it then, pal. It's a free country, even the author has a right to an opinion and NOBODY HAS A RIGHT NEVER TO SEE SOMETHING THAT OFFENDS THEM.
Fairly seething, to be honest. I could have taken the damn poem out of circulation and prevented its ever being reprinted anywhere; as the author I'd have been well within my rights. I didn't, because I know that some folk, particularly those prone to depression, find it comforting. But I'm damned if I feel obliged to keep quiet about my own opinion of the thing as an artistic production. Clearly she feels that by criticising it I'm implicitly criticising her taste in poems, which may well be the case, but when did that become illegal? And if this remark, which AFAIK appears only on my website, offends her so much, why does she keep reading it?
Fairly seething, to be honest. I could have taken the damn poem out of circulation and prevented its ever being reprinted anywhere; as the author I'd have been well within my rights. I didn't, because I know that some folk, particularly those prone to depression, find it comforting. But I'm damned if I feel obliged to keep quiet about my own opinion of the thing as an artistic production. Clearly she feels that by criticising it I'm implicitly criticising her taste in poems, which may well be the case, but when did that become illegal? And if this remark, which AFAIK appears only on my website, offends her so much, why does she keep reading it?
