Sturgeon's Law

The interesting thing about that fallacy is that it *reduces* interest in the art -- it's a purely sadistic critical system. On the plus side, though, it does finish off dead-end styles once and for all. "Nobody writes waltzes like Strauss anymore!"
 

For me, the more serious problem is criticism that attacks collections on terms that are not their own. If a critic really wants to trash a book, it's too easy to trash it because it is not successful poetry in the critic's terms. The greater challenge for the critic is to show that the poetry fails on its own terms. More reviews should be written about what the poems want to do, not about what the critic wants poems to do.

This would not change things much, but it would be fairer, and it would give most critics a better leg to stand on than their own "poetics" (to use that loaded term).