Brown is unusual in contemporary poetry for her willingness to be thought ill of. In fact, it's significant that ugly-truth-tellers are much more common in our fiction than our poetry. Much of our mainstream poetry is confined by an ethic of sincerity and the unstated wish to be admired (if not admired, liked; if not liked, sympathized with). American poetry still largely believes, as romantics have for a few hundred years, that a poem is straightforward autobiographical testimony to, among other things, the decency of the speaker. And, for all the freedom and "opening up" engendered by Confessionalism, to be uninhibitedly mean, we all know, is itself prohibited. Welcome to Poetry City: Hurt someone's feelings: Go to jail.

-Tony Hoagland, 'Negative Capability: How to Talk Mean and Influence People'