My Prejudice for Pop Poetry: What the Poetry of Atticus and Rupi Kaur Can Teach Us
Am I the only one who gets recommended posts or sees on Instagram tiny poems with super simple phrases? And these poorly written, semi-illiterate poems somehow have tens of thousands of likes?
“Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do― to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.”
I don’t mean to speak ill of other writers. But when I read stuff like that, I often struggle to even think of the author as a “writer.” Don’t know what I’m talking about? Here’s a poem from a pretty famous Instagram poet, Atticus:
“Brushing a girl’s hair
behind her ear
once a day
will solve more problems
than all those
therapists
and drugs.”
Yuck.
It gets worse than that, but I digress. I’m also sure many of you have heard of Rupi Kaur, and I do admire her for how many people she’s been able to reach with her poems, some of which I enjoy. And maybe this is like a jazz musician saying that rock is the death of good music, or a fiction writer claiming trashy romance novels are the death of literature. I don’t know, but there’s something I don’t respect about modern-day pop poetry and its two-dimensional nature.
I posted something on my Instagram story this week asking if poetry is only good if it’s understood. Do we only appreciate poetry when we know exactly what it’s saying, without any room for interpretation? Without any room for empathy? I was talking with Sandy, and he said something I should work on broadly is making my poetry more relatable. Not to write about traumatic events from my childhood so much because only a few people will be able to understand what I’m writing about.
So would more people understand if I wrote so broadly, so two-dimensionally, that anyone could relate to it? If I wrote a poem that said something like:
“And I love him
like a sunrise, like a new
day. Loving him brings
more joy than beach days,
than drinks, or drugs, or
sunsets.”
Blegh.
But truthfully, I think I would go feral writing things like that. A poem is a form of expression, yes, and does that mean it has to be good? Definitely not. And I’m happy that millions of people who would be otherwise uninterested in poetry are reading it. What does it teach us? To read critically. To think for ourselves. That we can (and should) write, even if it’s bad. But I don’t think I can do it. Not even if it gets me more readership or whatever.
I’ve been struggling to write this post as well because even this sounds pretentious. I think there’s a frustration that simmers underneath it all, right? Because I put so much thought and effort into my writing for it to mostly flounder. But it’s nice to receive some recognition now and then. If you check out my “Publications” page, you’ll see I have a few upcoming poems to be published, as well as two new poems in io Literary Journal’s all-access eBook, Tales from Six Feet Apart. Which you should definitely check out.
In the meantime, here’s a new poem for you all. As for my poetry count for the year, I’m keeping steady! I’ve written a poem for every day this year, marking 66 poems to date.
depression as sun sickness
the milky way drapes her arms as a mother
does. out of necessity, or obligation. the milky
way has slender fingers, dipped in honey, to
wrap around my throat, its tips dripping down
to my small intestine, & if i were to swallow
the universe whole, it would look like this, like
sun sickness, like spotted skin bleeding hues as
magenta knuckled hands, as a wrist scraped
against a bedside table, where whispers of the
solar system rest in its drawers, about if it swallows
us, or us, it.
