Nick encourages the poets to enjoy their biases and accept blogging as the heir to literary reviewing.

Now I love Nick, but this is the noble avant-garde "if you build it they will be Kevin Costner" fallacy. Yes, eventually it works out that our notes have the same currency as the big papers and reviews, but it is also true that in the long run we are all dead. I am impatient. I am also sick of the hand-wringing that accompanies the feelings of neglect that go with waiting for time to sort it out.

I am sick of the insistence on feeling hurt and neglected.

Sick of it.

The genuine response to my poser and consideration of the ethics of reviewing is not to mull an Ideal Review but to pitch and write more reviews for bigger pubs. To pardon my Braveheart f***ing accept the political blah-blah that has isolated the work I like and participate in the broader conversation enough to get a place at the table.

Loved everybody's thoughts and notes on reviewing, though -- and am totally grateful for all the helpful critique. Of which Nick's post is the crowning statement, actually.

But I am not going to participate in any more avant-garde hand-wringing about how the other side god it makes me sick just starting to describe that position. There is no "other side." There is writing, there is reading, there is noticing, and then there's talking about it all. The rest is marketing.