"In short, any competent critic."
Yuck. I think it is precisely that self-confident critical apparatus that is far too often the bulk of what Rick is saying falls out of the frame of the poems themselves and is only a screen for the reviewer's own inevitable subjectivity. Such a critical view without honest subjective experience is dead in the water for many readers. The reverse can be a problem as well, but feeling one's way into the poems of another can be accomplished by an adroit essayist.
Nemo
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