David Orr on Reviewing and Criticism

An interesting interview at Lemon Hound's blog, from which here are a couple of short extracts:

"If you’re a poetry critic writing for a general audience, it’s essential to realize that the overwhelming majority of your potential readers think of your art form the way most people think of Renaissance faires. That perception is wrong, of course, but it’s one you ignore at the risk of having your audience read your opening sentence and promptly assign you to a pigeonhole adjacent to the jousting fanatics..."

"I’ve always thought that criticism is its own art form. It’s true that only by reading poetry can we have the experience “reading poetry,” but it isn’t clear to me that that experience is richer or better than the experience of reading criticism, if the criticism is good enough. So I guess by “writing about writing” I hope to achieve something at least as interesting to the reader as a decent poem or pop song."