Houlihan doesn't even try to see what Bruce Andrews is doing. She just lazily invokes principles of conventional writing and finds them absent. Does she even notice that there are some more conventionally good poems in the book, by Arther Sze for example? No, all must be tarred with the same brush. I don't even like Andrews that much, but I don't see his writing as particularly opaque. I might have my problems with the Hejinian selection, but there are many hidden treasures--Erin Moure for example--that any open-minded person should be able to recognize. Chris Lott, who is open-minded almost to a fault--found many things to like as well as dislike in these pages.

I must say that not seeing Hejinian's protestations about the concept of "bestness" as a subtle captatio benevolentiae betrays a certain rhetorical deafness.