A closer look at the NYT's Sunday poetry roundup

Critic Jeff Gordinier chronicled four new poetry volumes over the weekend for The New York Times' Sunday Book Review: Flies, by Michael Dickman; Bringing the Shovel Down, by Ross Gay; Torn, by C. Dale Young; and Becoming Weather, by Chris Martin. We wonder if this approach might undercut the effort behind most of these books: with four reviews to one page, Gordinier doesn't have room to do anything other than yay, or in this case, sometimes nay the books. To some, his analyses have come off as cursory glances rather than careful reviews.

So far, online chatter has been resistant to the piece. The conversation on the WOM-PO (Women's Poetry) email listserv points out that once again we're treated to a male reviewer, reviewing four books by men.

Meanwhile, Ben Mirov, tongue firmly in cheek at HTMLGIANT, had this to say:

One of the most most incisive and effective pieces of criticism in the review, ”(oh, buck up, people!)”, comes towards the end of the excerpt. The phrase “buck up” is commonly used to encourage one to increase their morale, however, in this case the author has put it to use as a tool of critical engagement. Rather than telling the poet to “buck up” or applying the critique to the poet’s work, the author has used the phrase to evaluate the people the author loves. This tactic is effective as it encourages me assume that the people the author loves are probably undesirable individuals. Though they are loved by the author, I now feel free to assume that these people are vapid assholes.

Gordinier also coins what he calls a "substrain of contemporary American literature":

Really, though, “Becoming Weather” is an example of a substrain of contemporary American literature that we might classify as Lazy Apartment Poetry. In the right hands, Lazy Apartment Poetry can be a very funny and even an aesthetically thrilling microgenre — pick up Joshua Beckman’s “Your Time Has Come” if you want to lounge on the couch and stare at dust motes with a little masterpiece of the form. In less careful hands, Lazy Apartment Poetry manages to be both banal and pretentious — it’s the sort of stuff that makes you think the author really is sitting around watching TV and pretending there’s some cosmic significance to toe jam.

It's a bit unclear what Gordinier means with this terminology, but ouch!

The question remains whether any press from The New York Times is good press? 'Tis possible.