I'm now traveling about a month behind in Poetry -- the arrival of the February 2008 edition reminding me to dip into the prior month's that was sitting on my end table.
The poetry itself was engaging but not exceptional this month, nothing struck me as wonderful or notably awful. Though, for that matter, I'm not sure that there has ever been a poem in Poetry that has compelled me to buy a collection.
The prose, the reviews, that's another matter. Though here, this month, I have to say I was disappointed. There has been an edge to the prose of late, of the past year? more? It's hard to tell at this point. But a smart -- it's been criticized as "snarky" -- wit about many of the reviews. This month's were weak. Mackowski's dismissal of Atwood (and celebration of Jamie) perplexed me -- I'm no partisan of Atwood's but I couldn't understand the argument from the examples provided. And Mlinko on Pinsky and Kinzie was a dismal conflation of the worst of the emotive and academic impulses in literary criticism.
Bring back the snarky, please!!
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