Canadian Poetry Reviewing Intrigue!

Look, we’ll take our literary hoopla where we can get it. Essentially, this poet wrote an article suggesting that reviewers only review collections of poetry if they can do so positively, believing that there are enough good books every year to make reviewing a bad one an active detriment to the field and to the fledgling poets among us:

Here’s the negative reviewer’s argument: “If I say, publicly, ‘Gutting the Fisheries Act is criminal as well as stupid!’, I don’t expect Stephen Harper to quit politics because I’ve spoken my mind and my view is different from his. So if I say, ‘I don’t think Q should have published this book!’, what’s the difference?” But this, I think, importantly misconstrues the analogy with reviewing. Debate is indeed a crucial part of politics in a democratic society — and this means one needs to be tolerant, and also able to take one’s knocks in the political arena. But theses and arguments — the stuff of politics — are rarely the building materials of artistic insight; and opinions about theses and arguments are qualitatively different from opinions about artistic achievement. For one thing, there is no culture of ‘equal time for the opposition’. Writers who’ve been attacked are not encouraged to ‘get in there’ and defend their work. They are in fact encouraged to ‘rise above it’ — advice that would make no sense in a political context unless the attack were pointedly and pointlessly personal.

Following the publication of her essay, this other poet responded, critiquing her claims and defending the importance of the negative review in an equally entertaining way, although it does border on “ladies be froofy and hysterical” territory:

And am I the only one who finds Zwicky’s assertion hilarious that “historically, Virginia Woolf provides us with some excellent models” of cheerful, uncontroversial criticism? The author of A Room of One’s Own, no slouch in either the artistic or critical (not to mention feminist) departments, wrote: “my real delight in reviewing is to say nasty things.”

Okay, still with us? The first poet rebutted the rebuttal:

In attempting to ridicule my claim that Virginia Woolf’s reviews can provide models for those of us who are looking for alternatives to getting out the chainsaw, Mr. Lista fails to distinguish between what someone does and what they say. Nor does Woolf’s remark that her “real delight is to say nasty things” constitute her considered judgement on how one ought to pursue reviews. It doesn’t even represent her entrenched feelings. It is made in the course of a letter at the beginning of her career, and in another letter, written at almost the same time, she says, “I hate the critical attitude of mind because all the time I know what a humbug I am, and ask myself what right I have to dictate what’s good and bad, when I couldn’t, probably, do as well myself.” Perhaps Mr. Lista will find this remark equally resonant.

And then, from what we can tell, this whole situation moved itself to Twitter.