Lazy Bastardism

by Carmine Starnino

‘If grown-ups don’t read poetry’, writes poet and critic Carmine Starnino, ‘it’s not because they have a bone to pick with poets. The truth is even more intolerable: they prefer not to. . . They’re just not that into us.’ In his latest collection of critical essays, Starnino reports on the state of poetry with his usual sleeves-rolled-up approach to literary criticism which synthesizes broad observation with close reading. Engaging both icons (Atwood, Birney, McKay, Moritz, bpNichol) and lesser-knowns (James Denoon, Anne Szumigalski, Peter Trower), Starnino writes with the style, wit and intensity of a poet-critic, offering confident, intelligent candour where we have too often settled for ‘bland, much-recycled truisms’.

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 3 out of 5]

More three-and-a-half stars, really.

Sharp-minded, tough, aphoristic, engaged, opinionated - all qualities needed in a good critic. Drawbacks? (Not his fault that poetry isn't my preferred reading material.) Lack of geniality, as well as a bit of stiffness regarding his own writing. There is a certain humourlessness that puts me off; more wit than humour here, and over the course of a collection of essays (on canadian poets and poetry) that can be tiresome. But certainly well worth reading.

[Andrew Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Galvanic. I don't quite understand why lucid, well-argued criticism like this should make me want to write poetry myself, but I'm not fighting the impulse.