Sunday, August 31, 2008

NEWS (updated)

I'm going to be doing poetry book reviews for The Rover, a new Montreal online arts magazine which is launching in October.

Articles will be quite short -- 500 words, to cover one or "hopefully" two books. But The Rover's literary editor, Elise Moser, has agreed to let me hyperlink to poems posted on this blog or elsewhere; indeed, she quite welcomes that idea, describing it as "smart and creative and value-added".

As some of you may know, I've been quite critical of the current culture of book journalism where the journalist or reviewer draws more attention (albeit indirect) to himself than to the book he’s dealing (or not dealing) with. That length of review-- one which will always give short shrift -- is a prime exemplar. Providing hyperlinks will allow the reader to read some of the poetry for herself, rather than depending entirely on the misrepresentations of some hack reviewer (i.e., me.)

The first book I plan to cover: Jailbreaks, edited by Zach Wells.

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