IMHO, traditional reviews were essays with a limited scope: "Is this opus worth your while?" In the Age of Solipsism that changed to "Was this opus worth my while?" Today, reviews are written in the first person, not the second. Modern reviews rarely feature many examples or technical analyses because the critics don't need to convince themselves and don't feel mandated to convince us. IME, most reviews are comprised of some annotation and twelve different clever ways to say "I liked/disliked it."
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"Maz used to question the value of poetry book reviews, saying it would be more useful simply to provide a sampling of poems and let readers decide for themselves if they were any good."
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To me, a sampling would be better than the author-centered reviews we encounter nowadays but a reader-centered review can put things in perspective, if only by specifying whether the poem being cited is typical or not. I see nothing wrong with a reviewer saying "I wish the collection included more efforts like this one: "
-o-