Intimacy, Vulnerability, and Belonging: Thoughts On (Negative) Criticism

“True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.” —Dr. Brené Brown, “Braving the Wilderness”  

Social media is a great loneliness factory. It exacerbates the feeling of disconnection through comparison. It is an anti-witness that makes many feel invisible. Paradoxically, it is a perversion of witness, a weapon to enforce conformity and compliance through hypervisibility. Whether through overwhelming praise (online love bombing, basically) or the threat of a misstep (“We see you,” the gatekeeper warns in near-perfect panopticon,) hypervisibility can be as destructive and flattening to creativity as not being seen at all. 

If there is a single thread connecting poets in today’s digital communities, I believe it is a kind of loneliness perpetuated by these dichotomous states of witness. When I think about the big picture purpose of a negative review, I think about that gnawing loneliness, the need for belonging. I think about the awful siloing of voices that occurs when a community conflates agreement with belonging. Everyone is steered toward the same handful of poets (you know which ones), the same interpretations, and the same thoughts. There is less room for curiosity, exploration, and experimentation. There is even less room for debate, for diverse, dissenting opinions, which is all reviews are: opinions. 

“If ‘Siskel & Ebert & Roeper’ had any utility at all, it was in exposing viewers…to the notion that it was permitted to have opinions, and expected that you should explain them,” wrote Roger Ebert (one of my critic-heroes.) I hope our reviews and our work at Table For Deuce serve a similar purpose, especially for emerging writers. Reviews are one of the most expressive, amorphous, intelligent, and revealing forms of writing we have. They are an exercise in intimacy, one that requires vulnerability, honesty, and risk. They require the courage to belong to oneself, to like or dislike what you do for reasons that belong intricately and intrinsically to you. It’s a form of loving witness (of ourselves and others) that combats the warped versions of witnessing we’ve created online. 

Besides all that, reviews are a lot of fun.  

Whether I end up admiring the work or not doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact I want to be in conversation with it. “After all,” poet and reviewer Corey Van Landingham writes, “an appreciation of a life is even more meaningful, more true, when one considers, too, its flaws.” I love every poem, even if I don’t always like them. 

My commitment to honest, thoughtful engagement with poetry stems from a deep love and respect for the craft. Through reviews, whether glowing or glowering, humorous or wholehearted, I believe we can contribute to the appreciation of art in all its forms while creating a healthier, more resilient, and dynamic community. We often ask poets to bring the entirety of themselves to the page: their love, anger, joy, grief. Why should we ask less of our reviewers? 

Each of us, poet and critic alike, must be wholly present, wild and imperfect and opinionated, if we want the future of poetry to be wild and imperfect and opinionated. Otherwise, platforms will be overwhelmed by careerists (believe me, we see you) and the most sanitized expressions of and about poetry. 

Poetry is an act of vulnerability. Responding authentically to poetry, too, is an act of vulnerability. We must be who we are if we are to belong. Whether in a poem or in a review, we must be brave enough to speak our truth and strong enough as a community to listen. It’s vital work, and I promise we won’t break poetry if we do it. In fact, I think it’ll create a more open space for genuine connection and true belonging.  

If we do this, I promise, everyone will have a seat at the table.