Kritiker gesucht

Poetry rarely makes the front page of The Wall Street Journal, but throw in 100 million bucks and the newspaper starts to get interested. Last Monday it ran a story about Poetry magazine, a 90-year-old institution in the world of American letters, receiving just such a sum from one Ruth E. Lilly, the drug company heiress.

So beginnt Philipp Marchand einen Aufsatz im Toronto Star vom 16.12.03 Sein Artikel schließt messerscharf:

We need critics, first of all, who can tell good verse from bad, and who then can act as collaborators with poets, guiding the reading public through the wilderness of various forms and pointing to the genuine triumphs of language that some poets have wrought. Until we get such critics, the audience of poets will remain almost entirely other poets.