Unfortunately, I'm not very familiar with Salt-Lick Quarterly, having only
browsed the 'sample' poems featured on the web, but something tells me that
a magazine featuring Jill Jones, Peter Minter AND Robert Creeley must be
into something good. Jill is an outstanding poet who deserves great
attention, surely we all know that. She generates a lot of repercussions
through the brain-waves, my brain-waves at least. We only need to retrace
her submissions to our collective 'snapshots' over the last 20 weeks or so
to verify the fact. And Minter and Creeley, well, that's about as good as it
gets for my money, as far as contemporary poetry goes.

The New Hope International review seems very unfortunate and I hesitate to
speculate as to why this uninformed diatribe was ever published. In my own
experience, Gerald England is a genuine person, with an honest dedication to
poetry. He edited such a very fine small anthology called 'The Art of Haiku
2000', which I enjoyed very much, with it's juxtapositions of scholarship
and haikus. And I'm not just saying this because I'm featured in it. All I'm
suggesting is that that small book is well worth the effort of enjoying it.

But there's reviews and there's reviews. None are killing because they're
all singular. I need to retrace a quote now by an Icelandic poet about
critics, which I've kept. I showed it to the author a couple of days ago
during an interview and he didn't recognize it. He read it through and was
so uplifted at the accuracy of the text in question, and so pleased to have
found a kindred spirit. When he finished reading the passage he turned to me
and said: "This is so great, who wrote it?"

Best

Árni



--
Árni Ibsen
Stekkjarkinn 19
220 Hafnarfjördur
ICELAND

Tel. +354-555-3991
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http://www.centrum.is/~aibsen/






on 03-09-12 19.33, Christine Murray at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Deborah and All--
>
> To answer some of the quandary you have expressed (while quoting my
> postings), Deborah, I was responding to Clint's inquiry about the quality of
> reviews at Gerald England's New Hope International website.
>
> Let me clarify: Gerald's webpage indicates he is probably a nice person. I
> mean no slight to him personally. What I find unfortunate is that England's
> NHI website is so terribly lacking in rigor yet so baldly self-assured about
> supposedly criticizing the rigor and seriousness of some fine work from
> poets such as Jill Jones, as others here have also said. Such a lack and
> contradiction cannot be taken seriously. Thus, my remarks. I offered the
> link to Gerald England's personal page only to show that he does seem a well
> meaning person, if a critically misguided consumer of poetry.
>
>
> Thanks.
>
> Best,
> Chris Murray