Lies and Reviews

There's new content up at Northern Poetry Review. Have only so far read two pieces. The first is Michael Goodfellow's thoughtful review of Lynn Crosbie's Liar. This is one of the very worst books I've read in recent memory, and it's good to see someone with the backbone to say it's bad. As an acquaintance said to me, "it's not even interesting as salacious gossip." The only reason I finished reading it was that I was being paid to review it. Which dovetails nicely with Shane Neilson's piece in NPR on why he reviews. Personally, I often suspect I've gone too easy on books I've reviewed, so I scratch my head whenever I run into this idea that I'm some kind of attack dog or even, as one disgruntled reviewee put it, "the Pol Pot of Canadian poetry." Seriously.