Entertainment Weekly is one of those magazines I love until I hate it. As with Pitchfork, I'm excited when they give something I already like or that I'm really hoping will be good an "A" (or in Pitchfork's case, a nine), and I'm pissed when they pan something I like. Then they're idiots (Pitchfork particularly).

So my feelings were mixed when I read the most recent issue and saw they'd given Billy Collins' new book the featured review spot. That's not the problem. I like Billy Collins, and anytime a book of poetry is getting the full-page treatment in a pop culture magazine, well, that's a good thing. What gets me is the reviewer's approach. "Do poems scare or bore you? Try Billy Collins on for size." It continues in this vein: "Billy Collins is like the best buggy-whip maker of the 21st Century. While many have an almost allergic reaction to text with ragged right-hand margins, they might change their minds if they opened (BC's new book)" "Perhaps because his work is accessible and widely read, and perhaps because people (and not just English department colleagues) actually pay money to hear him speak, he doesn't get much respect in some serious literary circles." You get the idea. What a cliched, condescending, and intellectually lazy approach. They don't frame their review of the new French film with "Most people think French movies are really boring..." Or start all hip hop album reviews with "Does rap scare you? Do you think it's all 'bitches and ho's? Do you think it's 'not music'" Ugh. I'm risking charges of sour grapes, but come on! Don't talk down to your readers, EW. You're always reviewing "serious literary fiction" so you know your readers aren't stupid. Review things on their own terms, please. Otherwise you're not doing us poets the big favor you think you are. And there should be a law against any other person using the word "accessible" in relation to Billy Collins, damn it.

I feel much better now, thank you.