Rhyming Action- A response

I wasn’t quite sure how the four pages of generalizations regarding poets and fiction writers had anything to do with the subject of the piece. I believe Baxter does have some good things to say about narrative circling and symmetry, however this information took me a while to get to—and by the time I finally got to the goods of the essay, I had already become bored and irritated with the authors persistent praising of the poet, and subtle bashing of prose.

I consider myself a poet…more so I suppose than a fiction writer, but for Baxter to insist that somehow all poets are certainly not fiction writers, and all those who choose to write fiction are not poets, is too uniform a label to drape over the craft of writing. I get the sense that while every analogy and belief presented by Baxter may well pertain to his own view of writing, it is not convincing to suppose every other poet feels the same way about what they do. He is telling the reader what they are, as opposed to suggesting variations throughout the craft—this seems very arrogant and ineffectively addresses the topics of which he is attempting to discuss.

McCoy