I wasn't going to dignify the badly written, inaccurate and savage review of my book Muscle Memory in last week's Times Colonist with a response.

I considered the source and decided to ignore it. The record speaks for itself. It is the first negative poetry review in a lifetime of writing and most of the poems have been published elsewhere and won national and international awards.

What bothers me is the inference by the writer that I judge men.

I do not judge men in particular. I judge mankind for its failures of compassion and mercy. I also celebrate evidence of grace.

What infuriates me is the inference that I am unsympathetic to Robert Latimer. The Jan. 24 letter "Latimer's crime a mercy killing," from a friend of Latimer's, draws attention to the pain that sloppy journalism can cause.

I am 100 per cent supportive of Latimer. The day I wrote the poem What Is Done, we had embraced in the canteen at William Head after I told him I hoped that my sharing his pain would lighten his load.

That the Times Colonist would publish hate mail in the form of a book review at a time when the world is focused on the devastation of lives in Haiti is in appalling taste. The newspaper insulted the suffering, insulted the city that has chosen me to be poet laureate and insulted a man faced with a choice none of us should have to make.

Linda Rogers

Victoria