If grown-ups donœt read poetryœ, writes poet and critic Carmine Starnino, itœs not because they have a bone to pick with poets. The truth is even more intolerable: they prefer not to. . . Theyœre just not that into us.œ In his latest collection of critical essays, Starnino reports on the state of poetry with his usual sleeves-rolled-up approach to literary criticism which synthesizes broad observation with close reading. Engaging both icons (Atwood, Birney, McKay, Moritz, bpNichol) and lesser-knowns (James Denoon, Anne Szumigalski, Peter Trower), Starnino writes with the style, wit and intensity of a poet-critic, offering confident, intelligent candour where we have too often settled for bland, much-recycled truismsœ.