Being a blogger and having a public address, I get all these books in the mail from a range of poets, published by presses from the likes of ahadada to the likes of Farrar Straus Giroux. I'm grateful, but I'm not sure what to do with them, especially when there's an implied contract attached that I'm supposed to sign and fill out. If I like the work and we're having a conversation about it, the people who send the books frame the occasion as a burgeoning friendship, always on the condition that I'm supposed to play the role of their publicity agent and spend a lot of time on something that may or may not be a realistic way of building a relationship with someone who's mostly a stranger. This stuff would probably go under the "junk bond" section of poetry's gift economy. One good yardstick to use with poets can be found in the words of George W. S. Trow: "Think about whether this particular social exchange happening right now exists as such without your presence. If so, it's probably a con."
I have certainly not come through with articles I offered to write at times, because I'm a human being and I get busy, such as having my foot run over by a car earlier this year, but let's be realistic: I like you and I appreciate receiving the book, and I will read it, but in most cases I don't have time to write 75 reviews a year. Notice the dramatic decline in prose quality and thoughtfulness among most bloggers who do.
The most frequent good reviewer that I know is Thomas Fink, and he does about a review a month. That's twelve books a year at most, which for many of us is what we're doing while holding down a dayjob. This means (insert Ron Silliman bar graph here) that if I write a substantial review every month then I can be sure to have at least 12 fair-weather poetry friends a year. Fantastic! I'm thinking in particular of one early experience I had reviewing a certain heteronymic gentleman who "has my book on his nightstand as he's typing this." I mean, I get it when you're doing the same intimate act over and over again repeatedly with 200 different people, I really do. It's just that I can only manage it with about twelve a year. Call me sensitive...
It may be that a disjunction is now beginning to occur between the sheer size of the poetry "community" and the emotional energy required for meaningful exchanges. But let's attempt a performatively naive statement (which may actually be the appropriate way to characterize this entire post): the poetry world is filled with bat-shit funhouse characters who pop out of the scenery and cackle at you deliciously then vanish, or who sidle up to you and converse as if they're juggling a lukewarm potato while gazing at you diagonally out of one eye, but it's also filled with a lot of good, thoughtful people who are capable of seeking out and sustaining relationships with others. Which means it's very much a sort of patchy minefield, not that I don't love it any less, but then again my foot is still healing.
