A Lover's Quarrel

Douglas Barbour is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.
He is the author of Lyric/anti-lyric : Essays on Contemporary Poetry,
Breath Takes, and Fragmenting Body Etc.

Carmine Starnino presents as something of a provocateur in the criticism
of Canadian poetry: “as the mass of Canadian verse grows vaster each
year, and, with it, hundreds of new third-rate reputations creeping into
every cranny of our tolerance, it seems clear that trenchant,
independent-minded reviewing—reviewing resolute enough to assess poets
in the most rigorous, thumbs-up or thumbs-down way—has become an all
but impossible profession [...] a relic.” But one this rhetorically
active, witty, and acerbic reviewer is willing to take on.

Starnino sees himself as defending the few good Canadian poets against
the many lesser ones, too often honoured for their faulty work; he takes
a stand as a guardian of traditional values in verse, attacking the
apparently valueless, rhetorically and craft-challenged
“experimentalists.” In his long title piece, he lays out his
arguments, over and over again, and those who agree with his postulates
will agree with his conclusions; many will not. But, hey, that’s okay,
he’s seeking to provoke argument and thinking about what makes for
good poetry.

Nevertheless. Although Starnino says, quite properly, “I believe, in
the end, a poet should be judged by his best poems (not convicted by his
worst),” he fails to live up to this ideal, and this is a real problem
for readers who might find at least some of the objects of his attacks
worthy of their attention. Most of us, it is true, enjoy a witty attack,
provided it doesn’t denigrate a work or a poet we actually admire. So
I found some of Starnino’s airings of his aversions dead on, and most
are entertaining; yet I also found too many of his dismissals lacking in
context or sufficient awareness of the best work of those he attacked.
His tendency to see all those belonging to the kind of poetry he
dislikes as the same, while granting those who belong to his side their
individuality, signals a further weakness in his critical approach.
Still, A Lover’s Quarrel is an interesting, quirky, look at recent
Canadian poetry, and it will incite the further quarrels it obviously
seeks.