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Explaining why you don't like a book under review strikes me as a good version, especially if the choice of book wasn't entirely yours. As a laying of cards on the table, free of the paranoia of the group victim and all forms of proseletysing it could be valueable. I might give it a try, if I can find a book I don't like. Peter On 2 Jun 2016, at 14:01, GILES GOODLAND wrote: Years ago I used to do some reviewing for Poetry Review; Fiona Sampson used to send me books more or less at random and I usually disliked them and explained why in my reviews; slowly it dawned on me that she was sending me books that she knew I would dislike, and I began to get a reputation as a negative reviewer, so I stopped. Giles From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Thursday, 2 June 2016, 13:49 Subject: reviewing practices In connection with remarks made by Tim and Kent recently-- I have done a lot of reviewing of poetry, especially recently, but one thing I have never done is choose to write about a book purely because I don't like it and want to attack it. What on earth would be the point of that? If you don't like something take no notice of it. The very fact that you don't like it means it is to you ineffective, you're not going to learn or realise anything from it, it is inert, so let it lie there like a lump of star jelly and pass on. And anyway, nobody's listening. As for hiding behind anonymity in order to shoot your mouth off... I'm not the apostle of some moral or spiritual credo in poetry, some hope for the future, some cultural light which is in danger of being extinguished by inept or blind poets whose work must be stamped out. We are not missionaries. The idea that it is part or the whole of poetry's business to convert humanity to some new vision, some new reach to the totality, is now out of the question, it last died with the "new American poetry" and its adjuncts. It was killed by the poets themselves, by Olson and Dorn and Duncan, in the frightful megalomania and perversity of their late works (having been so brilliant as young poets). You cannot after that collapse go on any longer spurning the sense of common humanity. Of course there are ways of promoting poetical quality itself, which is very diversely defined (perceptual accuracy, technical skill, equanimity, the "wisdom" which Olson spoke against and many other things). This involves claiming a right, which might be difficult to justify at large. But to me none of this entails the bombarding of enemy fortresses. PR