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Ange Mlinko responds:



	

			
Ange Mlinko responds:
		




	

					
	
					by  Ange  Mlinko 			





	
	

				Ange Mlinko responds:



I'm surprised that my praise for books as different as David Shapiro's, Rae Armantrout's, and Jay Wright's could be construed as "predictable and programmatic." In fact, the books I praised are as different from one another as the books I criticized were similar. This similarity constitutes the status quo. I don't expect to find genius in the status quo, but a little vitality goes a long way. My interpretation of "American Kestrel" doesn't rely on any notion of the authenticity of the speaker: the redundancy of the self speaking of the same self, page after page, is bound to make an intensely monotonous read, whether ironized or not.			


	

		Originally Published: December 3, 2007	


	
		
		

	
		

			
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This prose originally appeared in the December 2007 issue of Poetry magazine


		
			

				
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 Ange  Mlinko

					

							
Biography

							
Ange Mlinko is the author of three books, Shoulder Season (Coffee House Press, 2010), Starred Wire (Coffee House Press, 2005), which was a National Poetry Series winner in 2004 and a finalist for the James Laughlin Award, and Matinees (Zoland Books, 1999). In 2009, she won the Randall Jarrell Award in Criticism. Mlinko was born in Philadelphia, and has worked in Brooklyn, Providence, Boston, and Morocco. She has taught poetry at . . . 

							
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Originally appeared in Poetry magazine.

		
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