state of the blog (II)

Took a few pieces I had about Substack itself and bundled them together

On giving mixed reviews

I have a friend who's a poet, and who sometimes complains that young poets seem to praise each other exorbitantly. Every chapbook is so lyrical, revelatory, wondrous, and awe-inspiring—it's impossible to know if anything is actually good or worth reading.

Poets don't do this maliciously! They want to help their friends! And you often do actually enjoy reading your friends' work. At the same time, it is rare in the extreme for a poet to go online and say something negative about the work of another contemporary poet, because it feels very petty. These books have such a small audience—why would you want to attach anything negative to one of these books?

But it's your own credibility as a reviewer that's at stake. If I tell people something is worth reading, I want them to think that I genuinely enjoyed it.

My own book, The Default World, has been reviewed several times by other substackers. Every single time, it's been praised. This is normal, and what I'd expect, but it's also not really believable. My book is certainly not to everyone's taste! I have to assume that some people have picked it up and disliked it and just not written about it—or that some people have disliked it, but have given it a review that sounds better than their true feelings.

It's gotten to the point where I assume that no substacker is going to say anything negative about another substacker's book.