"...Chaouli distills his characterization of the process of literary criticism into three steps: 1. Something speaks to me. 2. I must tell you about it. 3. But I don't know how. The three sections of the book correspond to these three moments, also glossed as "intimacy," "urgency" and "opacity." But rather than an argument, each section is a kind of meditation..."-- "The Point Magazine"
"Poetic criticism--you know it when you see it, or rather when you hear it. It is not a program, or a genre, and it is not, in Chaouli's telling, a thing in itself. It is instead a movement, an insinuation, a tendency. And you may encounter it not just in novels and poems but also in contexts remote from the obviously literary or aca­demic: in mainstream book or film reviews, pop-cultural commen­tary, sports journalism, or conversations with friends."-- "Yale Reivew"
"Chaouli presents an extended philosophical essay that investigates and champions poetic criticism. . . . Chaouli explores. . . with breadth and depth, regularly circling back and questioning his own premises and conclusions to move the conversation forward in ways that avoid linearity or closure. . . . This book will appeal to readers interested in swimming with the author through thoughtful musings rather than skating along the surface of an argument plainly laid out."-- "Choice"
"Chaouli's passionate, brooding exploration of poetic criticism should be essential reading not for literary critics alone but for anyone who has fallen under the spell of a powerful work of art and feels the mysterious compulsion to speak about the experience."-- "Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University"
"If, as Michel Chaouli suggests, there is no greater compliment to pay a work than 'to credit it with the power of arousing the urge of making, ' then this book deserves that high praise. I left its pages grateful to the author for articulating things I've thought but didn't yet have words for, as well as for articulating ideas that hadn't yet occurred to me. Chaouli's prose is patient and pellucid at every turn without ever sacrificing passion or complexity. His book renews my excitement about--and dedication to--poetic criticism, not to mention the sustaining arts of connection and conversation."-- "Maggie Nelson"
"In this startlingly original and elegantly constructed book, Chaouli enacts the very sort of practice which his phenomenology of poetic criticism so brilliantly describes. Something Speaks to Me extends the legacy of Barthes, Baldwin, Sontag, and Adorno, writers for whom criticism meant 'making new sense' as much as 'understanding [existing sense], ' and whose passages are read with unprecedented attention throughout. It is also a unique work: a phenomenology of intimacy, urgency, and opacity. This triad of terms enables Chaouli to explore the philosophical depths of what happens when criticism and participation are seen as interlocking rather than opposing activities, disclosing the seriousness of an underexamined and often unloved practice but also highlighting its everyday joys."-- "Sianne Ngai, University of Chicago"
"Inviting us to look afresh at the experience of reading, Michel Chaouli fuses the poetic and philosophical to stunning effect. To read his words is to be arrested by revelatory turns of phrase and ambushed by insights. Chaouli's luminous prose deserves the widest possible audience."-- "Rita Felski, University of Virginia"