In his post, the joy of revision, Robert Peake talks about looking at a poem’s elemental structure and intentions, and about the benefits of workshops for aesthetic calibration:
it is through input from other self-aware readers that poets can often develop most quickly, learning through feedback how their decisions affect a receptive other. Through both giving and receiving input on poems, the poet also increasingly learns to act as this receptive other for herself in composing and writing her own poems. This is why workshop groups can provide a powerful boost to the development of any writer, and especially poets.
Yet, due to the subjective nature of poetry, and the inevitable realities of interpersonal dynamics, workshop groups can tend toward consensus, which favors the safety of the known, and therefore tends toward mediocrity. However, by focusing on the poet’s specific decisions, and the effect of those decisions upon a receptive, intelligent reader, the poet can be given useful feedback. This feedback is not so much on what a reader may or may not have liked, but is instead about what is and is not working in relation to the poet’s intent