Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

Carmine Starnino complains about the complainers who kvetch that poetry has lost “ordinary” readers. He says that it does not make sense to blame the poets. Before I signed on to po-biz, my first profession (thank god, a paying one) was ed-biz. There we took responsibility for our side of the bench: if the learner didn’t learn, then the teacher didn’t teach. But Starnino blames the reader, not the writer, when what we’ve got here—dare I say it?—is a failure to communicate. Come on. Let’s show a little respect for the grown-ups who simply don’t want to read poetry.