Poetry Readers Challenge discussion

http://www.partisanmagazine.com/revie...

I can't imagine but wish he'd let us know before he started. We could've sent him a "PRC Book-Pak."

Gulp!

It makes me feel embarrassed about all the years I haven't been able to meet our group's goal of 20 books/yr. :-)

I didn't know 20 was the magic number, truth be told. I might just make it!

Oh, that's so interesting. Thanks Jenna.

It does seem to be a trend in major newspapers and magazines that, when they print reviews of poetry books at all, they print omnibus reviews that consider 3-4 books at once and compare them against one another. I mean, rather than just reviewing one book at a time, the way we do here. And I think there is something to be said for that forest-instead-of-trees approach: it forces the reviewer to take a step back and ask, "Wait, where does this one poetry book fit into the grand scheme of things? How does it stand against other books of its era, and how does it stand against books of other eras? How does it push language forward, or not?" So I'm grateful to Matthew Buckley Smith's essay for making me think about those things, to think about what it is we're doing when we review a book anyway.

Twenty books per year sounds good - I hope I can achieve that. I sadly left my books in San Francisco which were sent by poet friends to me. So didn’t get to read them - Hopefully my husband is enjoying them.

I expect I will have to keep earning money slowly throughout the year to buy them now - I daren’t ask them to resend, and to purchase more.

However, I buy from poets I’ve seen read, in the UK, on Zoom poetry events and those that have been recommended. I’m hoping to achieve that and the twenty book challenge now that I am starting to reach other poetry groups here at Goodreads.

Trying is the main thing, Trish. I don't know if it's like this in the UK, but most libraries I've seen in the U.S. (or bookstores) rarely have more than a handful of contemporary poets. You may find many shelves of Shakespeare, Milton, Whitman, but few, if any, of the people you've heard read in person in the last five years. I'm thankful for secondhand bookstores and a generous husband who buys me a lot of contemporary poetry from both the U.K. and U.S. each Christmas. You can, though, review older poetry in this group.

I'm not so fond of anthologies, because I can't keep straight who wrote what.

Jenna wrote: "It does seem to be a trend in major newspapers and magazines that, when they print reviews of poetry books at all, they print omnibus reviews that consider 3-4 books at once and compare them agains..."

Jenna, you do review a lot. I think I could maybe review 100 poetry books if I were willing to give up novels, but I'm never going to do that.

Alarie wrote: "Jenna wrote: "It does seem to be a trend in major newspapers and magazines that, when they print reviews of poetry books at all, they print omnibus reviews that consider 3-4 books at once and compa..."

I suspect nobody, not even the author of the article I linked, would seriously recommend that anyone review 100 poetry books per year every year! Still, I'm glad Smith did the unthinkable just the one time so that we could learn from his experience. (And thanks for bumping this old thread -- it led to me reading Smith's article all over again and enjoying it for the second time!)

This year, in what very little spare time 2023 is giving me, I've actually been reading mostly fiction (my two main reads at the moment are Les Misérables and Dracula--i.e., Books Where Main Male Characters Hide in Coffins That Are Falsely Believed to Be Filled With Dirt), so I won't come anywhere near meeting this group's 20-poetry-books-per-year goal this year. I'll be cheering the rest of you on, though!

I loved Les Mis, too.