Letter from Poetry Magazine

Letter to the Editor

Originally Published: February 01, 2011

Dear Editor,

I definitely plan on buying Michael “Gawker Poetics” Robbins’s book when it appears in 2012, and will continue to look out for his work until then. Unfortunately, though, he is a less-than-stellar interviewee [December 2010]. I was more confused after reading his responses than I was after reading the poems, and I wasn’t much confused after reading the poems—at least not in a bad, which-way-did-the-wind-blow-my-favorite-hat kind of way. I was wowed, curious, stimulated. With the half-obfuscating interviews after the fact, however, not so much.

But I’m glad poets like Robbins are writing, and I’m glad poets like him are being published in Poetry. Thanks for the issue.

Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of the poetry collection Fur Not Light (2019), which The Kenyon Review called an “example of radical humility … its poems enact a quiet but persistent empathy in the world of creative writing.” Alessandrelli directs the nonprofit book press/record label Fonograf Editions.

Read Full Biography