This is rather chilling, when you parse it carefully. The passage below is someone (name again omitted to protect the guilty) responding to ex-Orange County and current-New England poet/tastemaker Victor Infante's recent post about Poetry Critics:
Victor this is wonderful! I've always shunned the term "critic" in favor of the terms "promoter" or "champion". My podcast sometimes gets complaints that I seem to love everything. And my response has always been, sure there is poetry I hate. I just don't bother with it. I'm too busy trying to champion the things I love. The idea that the role of the critic is to fight for what is to survive is elegant and sweet.Excellent post!!!!
Infante's original post:
http://ocvictor.livejournal.com/772896.html
I guess I believe in the "retail mentality." I imagine poetry being akin to, say, the local Amoeba Records store in Hollywood. If you want free verse, there's a department. If you want sonnets or sestinas, look for departments for those poetric forms. If you desire poetry written in Esperanto, there's a department for that.
To espouse an idea that "the role of the critic is to fight for what is to survive" is sheer silliness--and rather Nazi-like as well.
In the end, it's the task of the potential reader--not the critic--to make the ultimate determination about what he or she wants to read and/or champion.
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