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Thanks, but I'm afraid I wasn't very clear.
First, I'm not sure you need someone with a different opinion to evaluate your work. You know what YOU think and that's what the poem expresses. What an opposition opinion does is just blunt the force of what you have to say. You already know it's controversial and might incite unpleasant responses, so you don't need to have that confirmed.
It's more a different perspective I'm looking for. To stick with my hypothetical example, for the sake of simplicity, I know I'm going to offend Hitler and his henchmen, and I don't care about that - but I want to be sure I'm not accidentally offending some poor German who just happens to be stuck living there and doesn't even like Hitler.
2. Who will the publishing of this HURT, and how badly? If something I wrote has the potential of causing a life-threatening riot, I wouldn't do it, period. No opinion of mine is so important that expressing it is worth someone's life. On the other hand, if the only likely outcome is some people I don't like anyway shunning me, well, I'm going to be putting that out there pretty quick.
I certainly agree with this point as you've made it - but what about a more complex possibility? Say the issue is so explosive people are getting hurt. Obviously, anything you say could make things worse. But if a big part of your opinion is that the violence is utterly counter-productive, then finding the answer to the key question gets a lot trickier. And obviously, there are no easy answers for something like this. It's an area I don't think a lot of writers think about much - I know I don't - that is better discussed calmly ahead of time. Since the alternative is making a decision in the heat of the moment, which is never a good idea. ~~~~~~Signature's Off~~~~~~
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