Since poetry (and art in general) is subjective, I'd like to post a pretty scathing review of Matthea Harvey's poetry collection, Modern Life, which I absolutely adored. I might dislike a collection of poetry or not connect with it but to completely dismiss it, though, the way Joan Houlihan does is just plain nasty.
From Contemporary Poetry Review:
Despite strenuous and awe-inspiring acts of imagination, impish acrobatics of diction, high jinks of imagery, large dollops of wordplay and death-defying high wire walks from sense to nonsense without a net, the poems in Matthea Harvey’s Modern Life land with a thud. It is impossible not to admire their ambition and marvel at their colorful performances, but while these poems give the impression of being chock-full of every sort of happening, they are constructed by stacking one declarative line on top of another and often end up sounding like a page from Ripley’s Believe it or Not:
More here.
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