In a nutshell: Alexandra Petri is a political humorist manqué with no particular qualifications to write about contemporary poetry.
A young woman named Alexandra Petri pissed off a lot of people on January 22 by writing a Washington Post blog column with the title “Is Poetry Dead?” inspired by what she apparently perceived as the lackluster performance of Richard Blanco as the inaugural poet the day before. Admirable responses have been posted by John Deming, Editor in Chief of the online journal Coldfront, and by Daniel Nathan Terry, a poet and blogger who teaches at the University of North Carolina.
All I really want to add to this exchange is a question of my own: Who the hell is Alexandra Petri? And (okay, two questions) where does she come off pronouncing on the life or death of contemporary poetry?
As identified by the Washington Post, Alexandra Petri is an “Opinion Blogger” who “writes the ComPost blog, offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She joined The Post as an intern in 2010, after graduating from Harvard College.” Indeed, the tagline of her column is “Alexandra Petri puts the ‘pun’ in punditry.” So let me get this straight: Alexandra Petri is a recent college graduate whose charge is to vamp on current news and opinion on the blog—not the print pages or even the online edition, but the blog—of the Washington Post. In other words, she has no particular qualifications to write about contemporary poetry or, for that matter, about anything, as far as anyone can tell. Oh, yeah, except for that BA (or is it BS?) from Harvard.
The inauguration, though filled with spectacle, is a pretty serious and important quadrennial national event. The selection of the inaugural poet is a pretty serious and important decision with implications for the tone of the nascent presidency that will resonate for the next four years, if not for the rest of American history. It’s fine to put the pun in punditry, or to offer a light take on the news and opinion of the day. That’s what Maureen Dowd, Gail Collins, and many others do day in and day out in the pages and on the websites and blogs of many newspapers, large and small, nationwide. But the best of these commentators are, well, number one, actually amusing and entertaining, which Alexandra Petri does not seem to be. They are also generally very well informed about the news and opinion they tackle in their columns, which, again, Alexandra Petri does not appear to be.
I’m grateful for the sober and serious responses to Petri’s post that have been written by poets like John Deming and Daniel Nathan Terry. But to a degree, those responses give Alexandra Petri more kavod (Hebrew/Yiddish for “respect,” particularly in the sense of public honor and recognition) than she deserves. Yes, this here post of mine is somewhat sniping and mean-spirited. Why not? Apparently, respect for the people and things you write about is not required, especially in the lighter and frothier opinion blogs of the Washington Post.