How not to write a review
Have just read a review of a collection by a new young poet, which encapsulates everything I think is wrong with reviewing at the moment. Humourless, pious, under the illusion that certain objects or subjects are "unpoetic" (can you tell me why a bottle of Fanta ought "rightly" not to be in a poem?). When it isn't being completely opaque - what does " The images and language do not smear together in a smooth arc at the steady pace of a walk" even mean? - it is castigating the author for writing the poem she wanted to write, rather than the one the reviewer thinks she should have wanted to write, a cardinal fault in any review:
Considering that this review elsewhere criticises the poet for "confusing flippancy with humour" (well, I'd say flippancy was a type of humour, but there...) this is the most stuffy lack of ANY kind of humour that can well be imagined. It takes me back to when a magazine editor told me he didn't think snooker suitable subject-matter for a poem. But that was decades ago; I thought we'd got past that sort of stuffy snobbery. It's also ironic that the critic has been accusing the poet of being preachy (possibly with reason, possibly not; one can't tell because the assertion is not backed up with quotes, despite the fact that this is an online review that doesn't need a word limit) and then comes up with this insufferably preachy comment about the collection being "thirsty for a considered comment on piracy".
But it is when we get on to our critic's personal dislike of beetroot sandwiches that he/she (the name is ambiguous) goes completely OTT: "There are other graceless flashes. At points she fills your mental palate with claggy images of her quite revolting-sounding lunches; her ‘courgette pie’, the beetroot and ‘dense’ bread of her sandwiches. The delicate, interesting play of olfactory stimulation that is a strength of this collection elsewhere is clouded and blotted out by these dreadful evocations.".
Does our critic not see how completely subjective this is, and how little it belongs in a review of a poetry collection?
Just to make things clear, I have met neither poet nor critic, have no axe to grind and haven't read the collection. The review is not, incidentally, wholly hostile; at the end it offers praise, but in a way so patronising to the reader of the review as to be off-putting: "I must coolly but seriously insist that you read all three of these last mentioned poems during which the whole piece fuses together yet remains definitively divided and neatly, sensitively, wisely, craft-fully concluded. And in order to read them and understand their true pedigree and meaning I must insist that you also read the full collection beforehand." (Must you, indeed? I think I'll be the judge of that.) No lines are quoted in full; indeed hardly a phrase of the poet's is quoted at all, another cardinal fault, so we have no means of knowing whether the critic's taste is any guide for ours and are simply asked - no -ordered - to take it on trust in this sentence that sounds as if it came from a brash sixth-former new to the game. Ach y fi....
"She is inconsistent in her sensitivity to the connotations of the objects she allows to feature in her poems; twice she makes mention of Pirates of the Caribbean in a collection which is thirsty for a considered comment on piracy, a pertinent and timely topic."
Considering that this review elsewhere criticises the poet for "confusing flippancy with humour" (well, I'd say flippancy was a type of humour, but there...) this is the most stuffy lack of ANY kind of humour that can well be imagined. It takes me back to when a magazine editor told me he didn't think snooker suitable subject-matter for a poem. But that was decades ago; I thought we'd got past that sort of stuffy snobbery. It's also ironic that the critic has been accusing the poet of being preachy (possibly with reason, possibly not; one can't tell because the assertion is not backed up with quotes, despite the fact that this is an online review that doesn't need a word limit) and then comes up with this insufferably preachy comment about the collection being "thirsty for a considered comment on piracy".
But it is when we get on to our critic's personal dislike of beetroot sandwiches that he/she (the name is ambiguous) goes completely OTT: "There are other graceless flashes. At points she fills your mental palate with claggy images of her quite revolting-sounding lunches; her ‘courgette pie’, the beetroot and ‘dense’ bread of her sandwiches. The delicate, interesting play of olfactory stimulation that is a strength of this collection elsewhere is clouded and blotted out by these dreadful evocations.".
Does our critic not see how completely subjective this is, and how little it belongs in a review of a poetry collection?
Just to make things clear, I have met neither poet nor critic, have no axe to grind and haven't read the collection. The review is not, incidentally, wholly hostile; at the end it offers praise, but in a way so patronising to the reader of the review as to be off-putting: "I must coolly but seriously insist that you read all three of these last mentioned poems during which the whole piece fuses together yet remains definitively divided and neatly, sensitively, wisely, craft-fully concluded. And in order to read them and understand their true pedigree and meaning I must insist that you also read the full collection beforehand." (Must you, indeed? I think I'll be the judge of that.) No lines are quoted in full; indeed hardly a phrase of the poet's is quoted at all, another cardinal fault, so we have no means of knowing whether the critic's taste is any guide for ours and are simply asked - no -ordered - to take it on trust in this sentence that sounds as if it came from a brash sixth-former new to the game. Ach y fi....
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