Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

I was stung by Mary Kinzie's opinion of people who read poetry reviews, which I suspect is also her opinion of people who read poetry (Letters to the Editor, January 2004). According to Kinzie, we "want poetry to be made familiar . . . detached from difficulty," distilled into a nice, neat narrative. Although we read critiques of poetry, we dislike debate, seek only to have our preferences confirmed, and "want to be told what to like." Here's what I don't like: burned-out writers of any genre who solace themselves with cynical claims about the inadequacies of their audience. Kinzie is right: readers like me struggle to understand poetry with analytical skills better suited to prose. But we don't read poetry criticism because we "want poetry to be made familiar." Rather, we want it to be made comprehensible, which is a very different thing.