Perhaps there is a parallel, cult-like aura of inviolability protecting this new writing from critical inquiry: such writing, which verges on a kind of liturgy, comes with its own form of worship and its own tenets of faith. True believers do not question its methods; they accept its sacramental texts as the Word. In neither case is readability or critical inquiry at issue. Like artifacts of automatic writing, these liturgical offerings are akin to divine revelation—believe in it or don't, but do not examine, question, or evaluate it. The church of new writing has established what every church needs: their articles of faith. They call theirs “poems.”

If there is no “best,” then every poet is as good as every other poet. Everybody gets a gold star.


The truth is, as Hejinian herself admits, there is no “bestness” in the church of new writing and that's because there can be no “bestness” when there is no means to determine whether or not one poem, or even one line of a poem, is better than another, when the field of poetry itself, built on a tradition of genius, human emotion, and the need to express universal and profound truths through the most powerful and compressed language one is able to wield, is held in so little esteem by Hejinian and her fellow practitioners that they dispense with the craft required to achieve their best, and instead promote a cult-like worship of the idea that everyone and everything is equal, that no poem shall be left behind. As a result, there is no real achievement in this year's Best American Poetry.