When someone writes a review, what is the target outcome?
There are 5 audiences it serves:
a) the editor who publishes it who needs copy that will engage readers
b) the writer of the review who is engaging with the book, community and work
c) the writer of the work being reviewed who gets feedback and a chance at promotion so ideas will be read and maybe even bought
d) the readers who will grasp the work and like it as a peer and/or as a purchaser
e) the readers who will not have their needs/wants met by the work but now knows something about the reviewer or writer or publisher of the work and of the place that reviewed it
Can a review be impartial? Can a person ever be? Are we Vulcan? Would that make us objective?
Personal opinion is going to come into a review. This isn’t necessarily bad. If one tries to be too impartial, it becomes a muttered lame conversation. Personality may come into a review. That may add color or may just distract.
The point is: Does the review offer value? For who?
Is the review written to entertain and inform? Does it tell tone and subject matter of what is reviewed? Does the reviewer get what the writer is trying to do and where the writer is on the spectrum of career and take that into account?
A negative criticism is more useful before poems become published than after it’s set to page. If we go by 95% of everything is garbage, a negative aspect isn’t exactly news. We’re all in the stream trying to pan for gold dust, and sometimes even a nugget we can go to town on.
Who is served by a positive review? A book of poetry is lucky to get even one review anywhere. Is it the job of the reviewer to teach poetics or use it as a platform to promote their own school of thought? It can be like reading a horror fiction reviewer criticizing a romance novel as if it were missing gore. If that one review is scathing, what’s been accomplished? If the review is looking only on the positive side, what’s been accomplished? It doesn’t need to be skewed one way or the other. It is to be conversation. A conversation hotly condemning or avoiding anything but flattery gets old fast.
A good review should be informed of what the writer is trying to do.
Shout outs of lines that clanked or lines that resonated is part of the dialogue. Bland glowing reviews is more a back-patting isn’t interesting. (It may support the poet which is useful individually and collectively.)
Sandwiching 75% good around negative points might be a good rule of thumb. It’s a delicate thing, a writer’s ego and the placement of words to indicate what is the weak point in a book without being overly harsh about it. Fair is relative. The review reflects the reviewer in the writing community as much as it does the work.
The poorest reviews are slanted language with a lot of self-reference to the reviewer. Which isn’t to say its not informative or amusing but doesn’t take me far in understanding if I’d like to chase down the work.
The review is to give an idea of what to expect from the work. The more that can be said of the work in comparison to past works, or, like movie reviews, to contemporaries and comparable titles, the more helpful it is.
When I enjoy a review and find it helpful to assess whether I want to check out a work personally the review had quoted the work. Citing examples for the reader to judge for herself is often the most useful part of the review. Just 50 words or 30 is enough to give me access to whether it suits my taste. It saves me going online or to the bookstore and finding that book in particular. The book review is a little thicker index than name, rank and number.
If added to a sense of the writer bio and sample and take on what drives the writer, the context the writing is coming out of, a sense of who the writer is, I also get an understanding of what is being picked up on as pertinant and why and the qualities a poet excels at, so much the better.