The New York Times’ book reviews have long given short shrift to poetry and it’s something that has been bothering me for a long time. The Huffington Post’s Anis Shivani (who, I admit, I often find to be a little glib) agreed with me during a longish take down of them called The Death of the New York Times Book Review: And Why That Is a Very Good Thing for Books.

He has also noted that they have almost totally eliminated poetry from their pages – implictly saying that poetry is not worth reading. And when they do review poetry, it is only established figures who get the attention (though Anis doesn’t mention it, the only other time they review poetry is on behalf of dead, canonical poets).

It seems that only place to consistently read decent coverage of poetry is by a hit or miss process of scrolling across blogs. It would be nice if the paper that strives to not just be parochial, but of value to national and international readers, would pay some attention in its literary coverage to what is, quite literally, the man’s first literary venture – poetry. Instead, they consistently disrespect poetry in what they omit and what they include.