Cheating a Review, Part II
Retrofitting a review is using the poet's not-poetry writings (say, reviews) to illuminate the writing.
In some cases, this is just looking at what books the poet was assigned to review based on what the editors or publishers' publicists think the poet is good at writing about / knows a lot about. But, more often than not, you find very real opinions about poetry by looking at the reviews written (all you'd find about me at the moment).
If one were to look at my reviews, for example, one would see that I went off on Thalia Field for having no music whatsoever in her poetry, and that I praise one of my blurbers for the music in her poems. Then, you would go back to my book, and you would note that I quote a lot of music lyrics and that I have some poems that have a great deal of poetry-music and other poems that have *no* poetry-music. Thus, even before knowing quite what it is that I am trying to do, you know that some of it has to do with music, and with music and words together. So, you look closely at that. You might note that one of the poems with no music in it whatsoever is about a deaf woman. You might decide to do a review on this issue.
Retrofitting a review is using the poet's not-poetry writings (say, reviews) to illuminate the writing.
In some cases, this is just looking at what books the poet was assigned to review based on what the editors or publishers' publicists think the poet is good at writing about / knows a lot about. But, more often than not, you find very real opinions about poetry by looking at the reviews written (all you'd find about me at the moment).
If one were to look at my reviews, for example, one would see that I went off on Thalia Field for having no music whatsoever in her poetry, and that I praise one of my blurbers for the music in her poems. Then, you would go back to my book, and you would note that I quote a lot of music lyrics and that I have some poems that have a great deal of poetry-music and other poems that have *no* poetry-music. Thus, even before knowing quite what it is that I am trying to do, you know that some of it has to do with music, and with music and words together. So, you look closely at that. You might note that one of the poems with no music in it whatsoever is about a deaf woman. You might decide to do a review on this issue.
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