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What is the difference between a well-written poem and a 'bad' one, and what allows for the critique of all literature so that one might say for certain it is a quality piece?Is this truely possible, or can one individual say it is genious while to another, it's just rubbish? Maybe both opinions would be plausable because of the way in which one looks at it from her own unique perspective.  Asking if a poem has too much of this or to little of that all seems quite subjective, and we're influenced by our own interpretation of its meaning. Not having known the poem we read was about Lincoln, I actually enjoyed it moreso than I did after the identity of the Captain was revealed. Maybe it is the mysterious figure's ability to capture an imagination that makes it all the more intriguing. To another, the poem could have had more meaning and purpose when the imagery of the captain's death was considered with the thought of Lincoln in mind.

Saying to a professor that my poetry skills are those of a true literary master would be laughable. There are works of literature which the academic world generally accepts as great. Maybe there isn't necessarily a checklist for what makes a piece of work brilliant, but the scholarly community can say if a piece of work is good and why.

In science, it seems that good or bad is not nececessarily whether a hypothesis is proven (as discussed with Grobestein) but whether or not it follows the scientific method and thoroughly does away with  extraneous variables, has random assignment of condition, has a clear hypothesis, and tests the hypothesis on a preferably large sample (in addition to many other criterion). This seems to me like more a check-list form of critique than the aforementioned literary analysis. It must also be noted, though that subjectivity IS a very real (and yes, important) aspect of science as well (also discussed with Grobstein). I found the whole subjectivity portion of lecture to be quite interesting. Although it is applied in quite a different way when it comes to the scientific process, an absence of individual perspective would arguably be pernicious (a new word I learned today from my english-major friend :-)