I harbor a lot of guilt about not reviewing new poetry books, as they’re the ones most in need of attention and well, and what’s this MFA about anyway?
I chose to review mostly nonfiction books in 2020, because there are so many points of entry. Even if the writing is mediocre, the review can engage with the subject, whether history, feminism, climate science, biography of a painter, etc. With a book of poems, the point of entry is always language, even if the subject is rich and apparent, and it requires very deep attention, as does reading it, and you can’t falter. I don’t always feel is accessible to me.
Fundamentally, I also feel that whatever the poem IS speaks better for itself than anything I could say. I also feel this way about visual art and music. I could find something to say about a Rothko painting, or say, a Beach House album, but I would rather invite someone to sit with them for a while instead of reading whatever I have to say. Writing about film and prose, on the other hand, feels fluid to me, to both read and write.
There’s also the question of what happens if I don’t like the poetry book I’m bound to review? I don’t mean qualifying it as good or bad, but what if it left me out in the cold, what if it was boring, what if it provoked nothing in me? Again, I’m happy to write about a novel I didn’t particularly love, but this sounds so arduous when it comes to poetry.
There’s also the delicate issue of feeling like you can’t say a book is anything less than stellar. I saw some chatter on Twitter last year where writers and book people were alluding to the fact that no one could say they didn’t like the big literary novels of the year, because the whole structure of book publishing and promotion is so precarious at this point, anything negative verges on traitorous. This tension is even higher when it comes to poetry, and I absolutely get it. Why put out negative views about work with such a fragile existence - product of devotion to the word, published by the equally devoted, no one expecting to make a profit. But it makes it hard to write honestly, and this makes the prospect unappealing. (What would it look like to have book media where you could have robust dialogue about books, with varying opinions? Not savage critiques, but engagement and disagreement.) I admit that my standards for poetry are much higher than they are for other genres, and reflect my own biases and preferences, so perhaps its for the best I don’t review it.
I don’t read poetry daily or weekly, and I know poets who do. But I do need it. I think of it as what you break out when you need “the strong stuff,” like a good scotch. Or an expensive, gorgeous perfume, or a hot bath. Something you want to pay attention to, not do distractedly.