There’s something off about this argument. It might not seem super apparent at first, but when you think about what S.R. Evan is claiming and what he’s then trying to conclude from those claims, you might realize there’s a missing piece of information…is S.R. Evan even qualified to be making this judgement?
Do we know if S.R. Evan is a true poet? “*only* true poets can recognize poetic creativity or function as critics of poetry†So if Evan is going to hate on his haters, like he tried to do in this stimulus, we have to know he’s actually qualified for that by being himself a true poet, right? If we did know S.R. Evan was a true poet, and we take the premise that “*only* true poets can recognize poetic creativity or function as critics of poetry†then S.R. Evan’s conclusion would be a lot more convincing. But since we don’t know if S.R. Evan is a true poet, it’s a bust.
I think the contrapositive of the logical chain in the stimulus helps:
if your work does not convey genuine poetic creativity ——> you’re not a true poet ——> you can’t recognize poetic creativity or function as a critic of poetry
Hopefully the above helps you see why A is getting to the right idea. As per your question of the wrong answer choices…
B) Distinction? Actually the second sentence says that only true poets can function as critics of poetry. So that’s not forcing the two into one category or the other, right?
C) We have to take our premises as true, and we don’t need to justify our premises. We just need to justify our conclusion. This language is out of the scope of our stimulus and doesn’t really play a role in getting to our flawed conclusion either. We’re not talking about how the standing of a poet can be judged here, we are talking about what constitutes a true poet and what allows someone to recognize poetic creativity/function as a critic of poetry.
D) Again, they’re not really making this a distinction within the argument that has bearing on the conclusion that’s drawn. It’s saying that people who function as critics of poetry must, in fact, be true poets. So we know that some people are both (something like what S.R. Evan assumes himself to be).
E) We don’t ever dig into what it takes for poets to learn to improve their poetry or circumstances dealing with self-criticism.
