Perhaps it’s true that we live in a time when rudeness rules, but this book, which the author loudly proclaims to be a modern Dunciad, lacks the three necessary ingredients that make satire effective: wit, insight, and craft. The problem begins with the form that Johnson chooses for his sallies: the epigram. Johnson is clearly beyond his depth here and the limits of his command of the English language, including vocabulary and the rudiments of grammar are immediately apparent. To write a successful epigram is to craft a verbal artifact that exhibits crisp intelligence in the handling of language, and carries a “sting.” Rhyme, and in particular the rhyming couplet is the poet’s form of choice for this. Satirical, free-verse, epigrams are difficult to pull off for the best of writers, and we’re clearly not in that territory here. Johnson’s epigrams are wordy, amorphous in form (a definite no-no!) groping in diction and sometimes even lose their way before they end, leaving us to wonder what exactly was the point besides an obvious attempt to bait, belittle, or strike a posture. Yes, he waxes warm and cozy when he addresses some of his subjects–primarily experimental poets that figured prominently on the Buffalo Poetics List c. 1999–2000, but for others he withholds the puffs and brings out his brickbats of choice. Distressingly, many of his subjects for “satire” are women and minorities, and with them Johnson “transcends” the limits of his craft in two ways: a liberal use of scatological language, and direct unadulterated rudeness–and even, in one case a threat of physical violence. He attacks such well respected writers as Louise Gluck, Maria Damon and Catherine Daly in this manner and the list goes on. However, showing far more cleverness in the pagination of this tome than in the writing of it, Johnson buries such specimens of pathology in the last quarter of the total pages. What puzzles me is that this book does appear to have its fans, but then again so does pit bull and cock fighting.