[New-Poetry] All the Logan That's Fit to Print

[David Graham]

> In my opinion hatchet jobs and puff pieces are pretty much cut from  
> the same bolt of emotional cloth.  They aren't honest, and they  
> aren't about the poetry--- they are about the writer of the hatchet  
> job or puff piece, they are about career, and they are a sign that  
> in many important ways this community is too small for its own good.
>
> There are so many really good reviewers out there-- Rain Taxi does  
> very well in finding thoughtful reviewers.  I don't know why the  
> Times can't do better.
>
> Suzanne Burns
==========================

I agree.  Logan's certainly highly intelligent, and if one can wade  
through the show-off rhetoric; the shock-jock outrageousness,  
condescension and snideness; the laughably limited range of taste,  
there are many nuggets of fine criticism.  And it can be refreshing  
to see him puncture a few overinflated balloons.  But why bother,  
when in fact there are so many better reviewers and critics out there?

Logan and his admirers appear to feel that any criticism that doesn't  
go for the jugular is mere puffery.  While there's certainly lots of  
puffery out there, there is also a wide territory to work in between  
the poles.

So who are your favorite critics and reviewers?

Back when he did more reviewing, Donald Hall was one of the best, I  
always thought.  He had no qualms about attacking what he saw as  
ridiculously inflated reputations (e.g. Robert Penn Warren and Robert  
Lowell), but he was equally fond of ferreting out the  
underappreciated (e.g. Thomas McGrath) and composing judicious  
praise.  Neither puffery nor slash-and-burn.

Hall's a better prose stylist, too, for that matter:  Logan's only  
got one or two arrows in his quiver, both derived utterly from  
Randall Jarrell.

========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/academics/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/academics/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
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