“No contemporary literary critic has called to question the artifice of a publicity-driven book industry or taken to task the artistry of today’s literary darlings as provocatively as Anis Shivani. He has single-handedly fueled conversations that were once polite coffee house chatter into passionate debates about what’s worth reading and what should be pulped post-haste. Privileging integrity over popularity, Shivani stings when he writes, but his are the wake-up calls we’ve been waiting for!”
—Rigoberto González, author of Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa
“This book is a driving, spirited, and articulate attack on what American poetry has become as ‘creative writing’ in the university degree programs. Shivani convincingly argues that the MFA writing system (based on the medieval guild system) turns out writing that presents the poet as a self-indulgent peddler of soft lies, bound to a tame, politically-correct liberalism. The book is filled with alarming revelations concerning not only the vacuity of the standard workshop poem (whose 'masters' are identified as Jorie Graham, Louise Gluck, Billy Collins and Phillip Levine) but literary criticism itself, often no more now than hollow hagiographic appreciation written by one 'master' in praise of another. Every young poet and prose writer should read this book."
—Clayton Eshleman, author of The Grindstone of Rapport
"These provocations would be merely provocations--cheap shots, sucker punches--did they not together compose an ambitious vision of the possibilities, the obligations, of literature, were they not in service of profound and comprehensive cultural critique, and did they not offer us such warnings as this: 'all art requires both a representational and an ideational component; practicing only the first...is to collaborate in one's own annihilation.' Brace yourself. You will be implicated—as I am—in more than one of the charges Shivani levels, but also challenged to recall, in the face of the cynical reputation machine, the reasons why literature has mattered, might matter, does matter."
—H. L. Hix, author of Spirits Hovering Over the Ashes: Legacies of Postmodern Theory
"Ranting against what he calls 'the collective ideocracy,' a literary culture of timid, anodyne, but prolific piffle, Anis Shivani has created an American Dunciad for the 21st century, He faults academe for inspiring formulaic fiction that is nothing but 'cheap counseling to the bereaved bourgeois' and poetry that is narrow in scope and at best merely affable. While denouncing the decadent mediocrity of what passes for passionate praise. Societies need gadflies to sting them out of stupors. Before handling this one his hemlock, consider that what tastes like wormwood might be elixir."
—Steven G. Kellman, author of The Self-Begetting Novel and The Translingual Imagination
"In any debate, it does no good to hide. I am a fan of creative writing programs and devoted reader of many and varied writers, but Shivani argues another point of view clearly, persuasively, and often brilliantly, pointing to problems we need to address. His generous collection brings together essays, reviews, and articles that oblige us to rethink or defend the decisions we make in our lives as writers, teachers, editors, publishers, and readers. Fascinating, informative, fiery, and only occasionally infuriating, this is a book that insists we stand up to be counted. I recommend it wholeheartedly to all who care as deeply about literature as he."
—Kelly Cherry, author of Writing the World and The Woman Who
"Shivani is chronicling, and lamenting, the widget-ification of American fiction under its new modes of production." —Pamela Haag, Big Think
"Shivani embodies a zeal for literature that is sorely lacking in our selfabsorbed, self-promoting, contemporary landscape."
—Prarie Schooner
"Throughout Where Skulls Speak Wind, the language stands as its greatest accomplishment. Each poem is composed of words that literally beg to be spoken aloud, verbally released from the tethers of the printed page."
—The Desert-Mountain Times
