Pope

As I was reading I couldn’t help but think of food critics and chefs on the Food Network. In the opening lines of the poem he outlines that bad criticism is worse than bad writing and to follow, that even though there are bad critics, literature needs criticism. I applied this to the Food network. In the iron chef, there are these amazing chefs who cook up these amazing meals and then some celebrity judge comes out with “the saltiness of this dish overwhelms the sweetness of it.” There is no way that this benefits the cook in anyway and it makes me mad cause if I was there I would enjoy the dish. Pope also in lines 347- 353 says that a critic takes the easy way out and accuses them for using the same objection that other critics use. He also is saying that writers who use phrases like “the cooling western breeze” “it whispers through the trees” or writers who just use the same old material because it has worked in the past. This is where I also drew a parallel with iron chef. Bobby Flay he does the same thing every time with different dishes. If he is using spinach as the main ingredient, he will mask it with filet mignon, always sticking with what has worked in the past and not showing anything new. He is an example of where literature/ the chef needs some criticism in order for him to mix it up a bit. Another line that I really liked was "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learned to dance" (362- 363) Greatest is not something that comes easily or something that you are born worth but rather something that you have to work for. “So much they scorn the crowd , that if the throng by chance go right, they purposely go wrong” back to the food network, there is the judge who is a British women on all the cake challenges. No matter what, she will have some scorn for the contestants even if they are doing what she just told them to do. She to me exemplifies this sentence “so much they scorn the crowd” and usually her comments find there way into the “I’m British and I have to be like Simon” category of nothing positive to say.