![]() ![]() Hanif Abdurraqib is both a poet and a critic, and masterfully so. ![]() What I really want to see when I read a good writer is that they love something-isn’t that always the point? (William Logan is such a case, and perhaps the early Michael Robbins.) In better situations, though, the aggrandizement of the critic simply exposes criticism for what it is: creative writing, an experience that engages the head and the heart both, and that is based, like all the best writing, in passionate investment. A reviewer might get high on the power of playing gatekeeper, and start trumpeting ideology without seeing the ego involved. Once that binary breaks down, other dangers may surface. Criticism of all kinds is bounded by the assumption of a binary: There is the subject of analysis, there is the analyzer, and never the twain shall meet. One risk in being a very good critic, however rare, is that one’s own judgments might become bigger performances than the art one sets out to describe. ![]()
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