Reconfigurations 3 is now available - check it out! I mean, uh, check ME out!

Reconfigurations #3 is officially complete. I'm part of a feature called "Review Review" (I'm myself and Anon.).

Here's from "Review Review"'s editor Jared Schickling's Preface:

Book reviews. One can do a great service, or disservice, or minimal service in either case, to the work under consideration, not to mention both authors and to some extent perhaps, the “state” of American Poetry. And look around, they’re everywhere.

This potential and saturation inspired the project presented here. It’s what motivated me to seek out responses to the question of book reviews. A question, because when I ask it to myself (and I don’t think I’m alone), the familiar answer contains 500 words of as much objectivity as one can muster. But forgoing the formulaic, what actually is this activity called “reviewing?” What can it be? What should it be? And why? Is it somehow relatable to acts of reading and if so, what could that suggest for the review to be written?

Pursuing the question of book reviews over the past year led to a rather large and diverse critical forum in the first issue of Mayday Magazine, in response to a letter from Kent Johnson to Poetry. (Indeed, I’m indebted to Johnson and his letter for focusing my attention; so perhaps my cause and effect should be reversed.) In it, Johnson argues for reviving the practice of publishing anonymously authored book reviews. The responses from contributors to the forum grappled with the value and promise of this single, provocative proposition, and along the way many thought more broadly (and particularly) about the shoulds and should nots of book reviews.

Which led me to pursue the current project. Simply, I wanted to widen the discussion by posing the question of book reviews in the absence of any suggestion, any already formulated possibilities, propositions. Begin with the question, and the big blank page, and see what turns out. (Of course, such absence was not actually possible.)

The results of this pursuit, printed here:

1) “Review reviews,” to quote Nate Pritts, in which contributors reflect upon the state of book reviews, voice their concerns, and attempt new imaginings.

2) Examples of unorthodox reviewing.

3) Based on 1 and 2, the seeds of what could, perhaps should, be an unending consideration of the book review’s possibility.

Jared writes me that "The best comment I've heard so far, 'bloody brilliant.'" Fookin-a. Check it out.