Dear Editor,
I read with interest both Dana Gioia's ("Title Tells All," April 2004) and August Kleinzahler's reviews of [Garrison Keillor's] Good Poems, and appreciated the reviewers' bipartisan take on the anthology. But this appreciation only goes so far; whereas Gioia presented a balanced summation of Good Poems, Kleinzahler resorted to contemptuous rhetoric. How is one expected to respond to a review so painfully encumbered by self-consciousness and bile?
It's the voice of elitists such as Kleinzahler that turn so many people off to the possibilities poetry can present.
I read with interest both Dana Gioia's ("Title Tells All," April 2004) and August Kleinzahler's reviews of [Garrison Keillor's] Good Poems, and appreciated the reviewers' bipartisan take on the anthology. But this appreciation only goes so far; whereas Gioia presented a balanced summation of Good Poems, Kleinzahler resorted to contemptuous rhetoric. How is one expected to respond to a review so painfully encumbered by self-consciousness and bile?
It's the voice of elitists such as Kleinzahler that turn so many people off to the possibilities poetry can present.
Middleton, New Hampshire
Originally Published: October 30, 2005
Letter to the Editor