Dear Editor,

Originally, I agreed with the many readers who sent letters in recent months, expressing doubts over the current state of reviews in your magazine. Certain reviewers were harsh (often superfluously so). The poetry community in recent years has, to say the least, lost a great deal of its broad appeal, and I did not see how seemingly petty bickering was going to benefit either the particular titles being reviewed or the state of poetry in general.

As the months have passed, however, and I’ve had a chance to see the resulting back-and-forth dialogue, I’ve grown increasingly tolerant and even heartened by these exchanges. As Elie Wiesel famously put it, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” With that in mind, it’s good to see people actually caring enough to take a stand—either positive or negative—in the name of poetry. In a society that has grown more and more indifferent to poetry and its diminishing role in our daily lives, one can find reason for hope in the heated debates presented in your pages. Keep up the good work.

Tuscaloosa, Alabama