[Stylist] thoughts on a book I'm beginning to read

[Barbara HAMMEL]

I found a book on Bookshare entitled "Who Killed The American Poet" and I'm only in chapter 1 but thus far it aggravates me to know that critics and reviewers have so much power. I'm glad that when I critique other's work I have never told someone their subject or their writing was essentially worthless. When you make a judgment like that, it's about you and not about the writer. That would be like me, from my younger days, as now the poetry editor for Slate and Stylus, to decide that blind poets can only write abstract sonnets because man we need a form but if you can't understand something with an obscure meaning you're truly blind. Okay, so that's just my take on the book thus far. (Can you believe a critic actually said Poe didn't write poetry and that it was just taking notes?)   

Barbara Hammel