! Zeke Snirer, Poetry Critic

Zeke Snirer. he’s young. ish. he’s got something to offer the world: he’s the best judge of poetry. ever. this is his sincere opinion. so he’s obliged to tell you. often. in case you missed it. he’ll take on any other poet. invited or not. especially celebrated ones. he’ll even interrupt their own poetry readings tell them how bad they are and offer to read his own poems to prove to the audience what poetry should be. he’ll grade Shakespeare’s sonnets and tell you the very few which are nearly as good as his own - perhaps, just perhaps, better in some ways though of course not in others if he were interested, he would grade you Krishna, Moses, Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, and himself, if he got into that line of business. he’s a great spectator sport – you can read him now on the internet – if you like that sort of thing and if you’re not one of his punchbags for he’s like a boxer who announces a title fight (to which he’s not entitled) against a heavyweight opponent (whom he hasn’t actually invited) : then in the ring, it’s him and a punchbag with his opponent’s name on it, he hits it for a round or two, claims a knock-out, awards himself the title. and afterwards says the other guy’s a coward for not being there in person.. Bur does his abrasive whizz-kid act aid poetry itself? does it shatter the undeserved reputation, the accepted status of the famed, the thoughtless infill of the poetry that sounds like poetry, but is no more than that? a fresh breeze blowing through the stale and dusty air of the pedant’s library in the Creative Writing staffroom of the University of Academe? or would a poet who believed completely in himself be content just to offer us his finest poetry, and let us recognise it for ourselves; and put aside this damning of all others? even if he tells us quietly (as Shnirer does) that ‘we’ will be reading him above all else in five hundred years of poetry? I wonder – deep inside this combative assailant, Defender of the Faith and of the Muse, is he so devoted to poetry that he just can’t bear anything to be written that falls short of what he thinks is worthy of the Muse? or does he really hate poetry for allowing others to partake of it? whichever it is, he’s not in doubt that he’d be the best judge of that, and you better believe it.