I’m tempted by a site that offers poetry books for review. It would be a good way, I think, to force me to produce a review, if it were a condition of receiving the book.

But what to do, what to do, if the book is a stinker? What if, for example, the book had been Mark Strand’s Man and Camel that I was struggling to comment on for NaPoReMo (not a stinker, but not to my taste, either)? Mark Strand doesn’t care what I think, but a younger, less-established poet certainly might.

Even doing WEE reviews, I’d occasionally hurt feelings. Not liking, and saying I didn’t like, a single poem was enough to cause a ripple of reaction a couple of times in the blogosphere. Part of me says tough. Poets who can’t take a bad review are too precious to publish anything. Another part of me understands that with all of the poetry out there in the world it should be possible only to review the good stuff. And a third part wants to sleep in and let other people worry about it.

The cry of the intellectually lazy: It’s not my problem!

In any case, if you like reviewing books of poetry, check out this link to the Experimental Fiction & Poetry Reviews blog. Score a free book. Write a good review. Make the poetry world one increment better.