A strange conjoining of forces—as against BlurbMart Kent Johnson’s short essay is about reviewing, but I’ve chosen to focus on the blurb, which I believe has relevance to the topic. I should start by saying that I’m genuinely interested in the making of blurbs: how to lend (—wait, not “lend”, but freely give) the book or author’s […]
Nonfiction
DALE SMITH’S RESPONSE TO “SOME DARKER BOUQUETS”
From the Negative to the Norm: Jason Guriel, Kent Johnson, and Poetry Reviewing While Jason Guriel argues for critics to be more assertively negative in their reviews of poetry, his claims arrive with a kind of mute intensity in the pages of Poetry. Notably, he asks, “Shouldn’t the negative review, if we’re honest and adult about […]
DON SHARE’S RESPONSE TO “SOME DARKER BOUQUETS”
Definitions The Oxford English Dictionary says – it’s the first definition for the word – that criticism is “the action of criticizing, or passing judgment upon the qualities or merits of anything: esp. the passing of unfavorable judgment; fault-finding, censure.” Q.E.D. Just kidding, it’s the second entry we’re talking about: “the art of estimating the qualities and character […]
BARRY SCHWABSKY’S RESPONSE TO “SOME DARKER BOUQUETS”
I like Kent’s idea of unsigned reviews because I like the unspoken idea that would necessarily have to go in tandem with it: substantial monetary remuneration for the reviewer. Because, after all, there are two main reasons to publish. One is vanity, the desire for kudos. The other is the possibly nobler Grub Street need […]
MICHAEL THEUNE’S RESPONSE TO “SOME DARKER BOUQUETS”
I largely agree with Kent Johnson’s analysis of the state of contemporary American poetry reviewing and criticism. (NB: I’m not the only one. Johnson’s analysis jibes with the findings of some similar analyses, including Kevin Prufer’s “‘We’re All in Bed Together’: Poetry’s Good News Culture” and Kristin Prevallet’s “Why Poetry Criticism Sucks.”) And I largely […]
MICHAEL ROBBINS’S RESPONSE TO “SOME DARKER BOUQUETS”
I prize wit and brio in reviews—style—more than confirmation of my own aesthetic judgments. Manny Farber on John Wayne: “the termite actor focusing only on a tiny present area, nibbling at it with engaging professionalism and a hipster sense of how to sit in a chair leaned against the wall.” It is more difficult to […]
KRISTIN PREVALLET’S RESPONSE TO “SOME DARKER BOUQUETS”
I, like many other poets out there, make my living by teaching freshman composition, and I must say that Kent Johnson’s appeal for anonymity in reviewing is just a variation of a condition I try to school out of my students: the fear of the audience and its response to a writer’s opinions. After all, most […]
RICHARD OWENS’S RESPONSE TO “SOME DARKER BOUQUETS”
Hasty Notes on Aggression, Abuse, & Criticism The question of an aggressive criticism is always connected to the question of what is at stake in supporting, dismissing, ignoring or attacking a particular poetic practice. Insisting on a “more forceful satiric push” to the “negative spirit” Jason Guriel calls for in the March 2009 issue of Poetry, […]
DAVID ORR’S RESPONSE TO “SOME DARKER BOUQUETS”
Debates over negative reviewing aren’t unique to poetry. Every few years a fiction writer attacks reviewers or (more often) a reviewer attacks fiction writers, and an arm-flailing ruckus ensues in which many letters to the editor are dispatched and much Pabst Blue Ribbon is spilled in indignation. It’s a ritual as reliable as the start […]
TOM ORANGE’S RESPONSE TO “SOME DARKER BOUQUETS”
Dear Kent, I’ve read over the pieces by you and this Jason Guriel quite carefully, and I’m afraid I don’t have much to say by way of response: you both make legitimate points but, as I see it, offer pretty ineffectual proposals because you both focus on a minor symptom and ignore the much greater […]
