In the Book Review: On the Beach
Whatever you do, be sure to click through to David Orr’s essay, “The Great(ness) Game,” in this week’s issue. It offers what I feel is a long-overdue explanation of the shift, in American poetry, away from the “great literature” canons of verse and the antic hiving of today’s poetry scene. What’s needed is not so much a change in the way poetry is written — that will always see to itself — as a change in the way it is written about in publications such as the Book Review. All too often, poetry is reviewed by and for other poets. This kind of professional backscratching (which makes TLS just about useless) has no place on the general reader’s reading table.