Appendix A: How to Do Poetry Dynamic Criteria Mapping

Poetry dynamic criteria mapping (PDCM) is a method of inquiry you can use to discover, negotiate and publicize what you value in poetry. This appendix offers some practical guidance on how you might most effectively pursue PDCM.

Before we provide our handy 10-point ‘How To’ list, however, we need to point out that such a list will necessarily be qualified, limited and/or complicated by the distinctive purposes and contexts of your PDCM project(s).

We have identified at least three significantly different likely types of PDCM:

• (A) Realpolitik PDCM: Carried out by real-world, pre-existing, decision-making, power-wielding groups. Such groups will not need to agonize over our guidelines below about which texts to select or which participants to invite. Instead, they should simply use the poems and the people actually involved in their regular, ongoing work of judging verse. A careful investigation of three or four hours of such a group’s deliberative conversations can comprise a highly productive PDCM study.

• (B) Experimental and exploratory PDCM: Special groups will develop research questions unique to their interests and needs. For example, sparked by the experiences and reflections of the Contemporary American Poetry Editorial Review (CAPER) participants (and/or by other exigencies), a group might decide to study the evaluative dynamics of a group made up of six women and only one man, or a specific ethnic or racial group identity. Other groups might decide that they think ‘most successful’ is not the best guiding criterion for selecting and judging poetry and they will choose different key terms (see How To Step #6 below) and tinker with (or invent) other PDCM methods. To look at just one of many possible points of innovation, we hope upcoming PDCM studies will inquire into which poems are ‘funniest’, ‘most surprising’, ‘sexiest’ or (as in the case of The Word Works judges) ‘the book of poetry to which you would turn in a time of need’ (White quoted in Reiter, 2010–2011).