Ouch …

… Fear and Loathing in the Postmodern English Department. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Despite my own eager anticipation, The Hatred of Poetry is the worst book about poetry I have ever read. My assessment does not rely as much on disagreements with its arguments as on the fact that the book fails to articulate and defend meaningful statements about its subject matter. It is uneven in tone, self-indulgent, intellectually lazy, and bizarrely unfocused.