You, Too, Could Write a Poem: Selected Reviews and Essays, 2000–2015

Orr (The Road Not Taken) collects entries from his New York Times poetry column from the past 15 years, analyzing the works of individual poets and the state of the form itself. He provides equal parts illuminating commentary and hilarious jabs at the poetry world’s insularity and pretensions. He playfully skewers Billy Collins in a verse that perfectly mimics Collins’s signature style and disparages poets who are “small-scale epiphany manufacturers.” Among his many skills, Orr displays a singular ability to capture a poet’s sensibility, comparing Stevie Smith to a figure skater whose “seemingly purposeless meanderings” somehow “cut into the ice the figure of a hanged man.” A very clever piece examining clichés of poetic “greatness” argues for Elizabeth Bishop’s more subtle powers over “thunderbolt-chucking wild man” Robert Lowell. More user-friendly pieces look at the tradition of wedding poetry, poke fun at an O Magazine feature titled “Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets,” and summarily appraise James Franco’s poetic output: “Is it, you may be wondering, good? No.” Orr is an exceptional wit and critical talent, with perhaps his most brilliant feat here being how he dissolves some of poetry’s opacity and makes it more accessible (and interesting) to a wider audience. Agent: Betsy Lerner, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (Feb.)