LUMPS OF POETRY

I suggest that it was a mistake for the Book Review editor to lump so many poetry reviews, five long, five short, into one issue, Dec. 27.

Why not have at least one good long review per issue? Putting all of them together suggests that they’d piled up over the past few months and that “Poetry for a New Year” was a clever and convenient way of getting rid of them.

Also problematic is the choice of five major white Establishment poets published by four major publishers plus New Directions. Where are the minorities? Why relegate Sandra Cisneros and the small press who published her (Turtle Bay) to a one-paragraph review?

The one probably accidental interesting result of this poetry special was that reviewers’ attitudes and styles could be compared. Result? With the exception of Richard Eder, writing about a relatively younger poet (Gjertrud Schnackenberg), the four other reviewers heap one encomium upon another, praising his or her poet as the best (Kizer on Snyder: “the greatest of living nature poets”; St. John on Merwin: “a startling and inventive maker of images”; Krusoe on Simic: “doubtful if there’s another poet in America with a greater sense of clarity of image or foreboding.”)

Reading these reviews all together reminds me of how pusillanimous reviewers can be. Not a negative word nor a hint of criticism. These are our models, our poetic idols, say these reviewers, and we dare not criticize, dare not analyze except to praise.

After reading these reviews, I was left with a pain in my gut and a sense of regret that the reviewers are so blinded by the fame and reputations of these poets that they don’t even notice the weaknesses in the lines they quote, or hear their own absurdities. As Amy Gerstler says in her review of Levertove that the poet “will even write from the point of view of a river,” I wished the reviewers had written from the point of view of at least a modicum of critical objectivity.

These simpering eulogies almost validate Jack Miles’ previous editorial policy of publishing hardly any poetry reviews at all.

AUSTIN STRAUS, Producer: The Poetry Connexion, KPFK-FM, LOS ANGELES