Canonical Threat: The Rise of Instagram style Poetics
Note: This article was originally written in 2018/2019. A lot has changed since then. It’s been a pandemic. Please pardon references that may already seem a bit dated.
We, as a literary community, need to create language to discuss Instagram (IG) style poetics in a manner that is useful and not denigrating. This, so that we are able to have a civil conversation and accept that IG style poetics will inevitably have a place in the Western Canon. There have always been different camps in American poetics and there remains no need to be exclusionary. In a 2018 lecture[1], Don Share, Editor of Poetry Magazine, spoke about the dangers of calling something “not poetry.” Share, in calling attention to the pitfalls, said that whenever someone tries to make the argument that something is “not poetry” there is almost always disturbing underlying subtext—a subtext of sexism and/or racism.
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So, what am I talking about when I say “IG style poetics”? I’m talking about typically short poems that fit elegantly in the allotted space on many social media platforms, but particularly amenable to the boxes provided by Instagram. These poems are like thoughtlets. They express a brief notion, perhaps fleeting, perhaps not, with at least the veneer of verisimilitude, they are light on the page and on the mind, they can be read and understood without deep reflection, they often do not have takeaways for the reader to continue to ponder after reading, the poem is the poem in the manner of an image, (however, it should be noted, these poems are not presented in the manner of an Imagist poem), they are not subtle, they are typically surface-level and non-intrusive by design.
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A Gen Z[2] individual I spoke with during the research phase of my investigation into IG style poetics suggests part of the appeal of this genre relates to our contemporary shortened attention spans. I’m inclined to partially agree, but also to push back on this troublesome notion that we have stunted attention spans. In present times, it’s common to remark that people have short attention spans. One of my suspicions about this supposition is that we are inclined to make this assertation because it worries us. When we are in a mode of thinking, a mode of being even, where it seems we cannot focus for particularly long on a given task or thought, well, this is upsetting. Much like an acid trip gone wrong we worry if “we’ll be stuck like this forever.” The answer is that we are not required to remain this way. There is some agency. What’s unfortunate is that the demands of employers and friends and family, as well as a modernized American bootstrap mentality, pushes us down this path of being tethered to our devices, to screens, for the majority of our days.
It also seems worth noting that from an evolutionary perspective we are unlikely to have fallen so far so fast. That being said, humans definitely do adapt to their environments incredibly quickly. It’s been suggested that we have so many car crashes because humans were not designed to get inside 4000 pound structures and move them at high speeds. Hence our limited success rate.
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Going Under Cover, IG style poetics & Your Brain
I've been doing some quasi undercover research with IG style poetics. I found a platform (not Instagram) where poets post this style of material and briefly participated, in part, for the anthropological interest of gaining a better understanding.[3] As an anthropologist, hopefully I have not disturbed the community in which I conducted my research which, as any anthropologist will tell you, would be unethical.
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IG style poems are a bit like candy. These poems, gems of information presented by the poet, hit the pleasure button. An IG style poem usually both sounds nice[4] and sounds meaningful and your brain tells you that you have successfully understood the poem you read and can now move on; this is both validating and comforting. But the material is only skin-deep. Our brain, or at least half of it, doesn’t care about the particulars of the poem. Our brain is dealing with hard data. When encountering much of IG style poetics, our brain consumes this data and determines this is all there is to know and nothing more[5]. Our brain moves on to consider the next thing with ease. This is partly why these poems are well-suited to the Instagram platform. They integrate well, that is, they are not jarring to encounter as you casually scroll though your feed. If the poem contained a lot of metaphor or big picture thinking, then your brain would get hung up on these poems and this would (weirdly, but truly) be disruptive to the flow of semi-mindless engagement with material on Instagram.
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The following two paragraphs are a tangential dive into a theory about why our brains may be wired (or rather, may have been rewired) toward a predilection for IG style poetry. You can choose to skip ahead.
In an episode of The Hidden Brain podcast, Shankar Vedantam speaks with Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. McGilchrist offers a revolutionary theory about the interplay between the right and left hemispheres of our brain. The big concept to his theory is that half of our brain, The Master, is a sort of armchair philosopher, sits back and sees “the big picture”, capable of broad thinking (possibilities), and notably is disconnected from the realities of the physical world. The other part of our brain, The Emissary, keeps us from dying, focuses on us feeding ourselves, has a single-track style of thinking and therefore tends to think in black and white terms, is big on attention to detail like every position mentions in the job description nowadays, is critical, is knee-jerk, is where anger lives, is home to our fight or flight responses.
McGilchrist’s theory ties in to approaching IG style poetics as follows. He posits that we live in a world that for a long time now, and increasingly, leans toward favoring The Emissary, the part of our brain that reacts quickly and in black and white terms. This is not the part of our brain that sits back and reflects on big ideas or searches for depth (deep thought / layered thought / integrated thought). In fact, this part of our brain is more of the flat mind Nick Chater, a behavioral psychologist, theorizes. Chater argues that our mind is depthless. Looked at alongside McGilchrist, perhaps we could conclude that at least half of our brain is depthless. In any case, there are plenty of folks who say that at least an aspect of our brain is disinterested in depth and instead focuses on what is surface-level. McGilchrist goes a step further though and says that the part of our brain that is focused on the surface-level lacks the capacity to conceive of anything beyond that. That is, this half of our brain conceives of what it conceives of and concludes that is all there is to conceive. It’s blind to the possibility that there is any depth beyond the surface. This is why we need the other part of our brain—the one that says, wait a minute, there’s more to all this. But in the world of fast scrolling through your Instagram feed you’re operating strictly with the part of your brain that is, for all intents and purposes, depthless. This part of your brain perceives the words of an IG poem as data, quickly interprets that data, concludes that this is all there is, and moves on. That’s all it knows. This is why content that is effective on the IG platform conforms to proven methods. The medium is not the message. The message is the message. The depth of the message is restricted by the constraints of the platform and, as McGilchrist suggests, the way contemporary society encourages us to approach the world.
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A Room in The Canon
It’s definitely fair to say IG style poetics has a new role/place in the Western Canon of literature; in the same breath, it would be useful (for the literary community at large) to have an understanding of what role these types of poems play in order to provide solace. My sense is that many poets would be less reactionary and irritated by IG style poetics if they were able to say something along the lines of: “this is one camp of poetry and I'm doing something different.” The poetry community already has tons of tribes and it’s not a problem to have more. We live in a society of niche groups.
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There’s a somewhat infamous, frequently referenced, takedown essay by Hollie McNish, which she published in PN Review. It feels like I’m forced to make mention of this piece simply because it’s so often cited. Attacking IG style poetics McNish concludes, “artless poetry sells.”
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Because IG poetry is restricted by design, when writing about IG style poetics, it’s typical to hear criticism like that of Erik Campbell in his essay for Rattle, “Playing Makeup, Wearing Guitars”[6].
Here’s a few unsurprising pull-quotes from Campbell’s essay:
“it isn’t worth discussing as poetry qua poetry”
“Instagram is to poetry what smoke signals are to philosophy”
“its presumptuousness is insultingly presumptuous”
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Face/Off
Who is writing IG style poems? We tend to be talking about women, particularly young women, often young women from minority groups, some might say attractive young women from minority groups, who have managed to successfully garner attention (eg. large numbers of likes per poem and vast numbers of followers).
Some IG style poets have crossed into the dangerous territory of managing to monetize their poetry. Instead of being lauded for this difficult feat, they are chastised, and come under suspicion. This tracks with the history of not only literature and success, but all The Arts. As soon as an artist (writer/visual artist/musician) rises out of obscurity into the mainstream, there is a dramatic shift in their fan base. Many fans fall away because it’s no longer cool to identity with an artist who has achieved mainstream success. In this model, success is equated with being a fraud. Cool or not, when we talk about being successful and getting paid well, we’re generally talking about someone who has achieved a level of fame. And there are famous IG style poets—most notably Rupi Kaur[7]. Kaur paved the way for other poets to thrive in this space and should receive the appropriate credit for doing so regardless of whether or not an individual or critic credits her with being the most skilled artist in this genre of poetics.
Rupi Kaur is an entrepreneur. When I think about Rupi Kaur, I think about an intellect that has both creative and business skills. So yes, there’s a long history of scoffs and grumbling surrounding commerce and poetry, but let’s consider also the way we glorify the “mad genius” who tends to struggle with any number of vices. These are clichés that are dangerous for both current and future generations of artists. Society expects these artists to be wild and drug-addicted and live lives of abandon while managing to produce exceptional work.[8] Artists tend to take on these societal expectations because, well, they’re expected. When someone like Kaur, an attractive young woman from a minority background, rises to the top, can put one of her poems on a mug or a t-shirt and live the life of an “influencer” (with the undertone that this is not a “real job”), this results in quite a bit of side-eyeing.
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Movements
Book sales by IG style poets, staggering compared to the norm in the poetry world though they may be, do not constitute a Kuhnian paradigm shift. This is not the first time a new style has emerged while more conventional veins persist. When the Beat Generation style(s) of poetics gained prominence or when the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poets found their footing, poets did not abandon the narrative style (rooted in Whitman) or lyric style (rooted in Dickinson). These simply became other sanctioned methods of poetic expression.
We’re talking good old-fashioned tolerance here. You don’t have to like someone to recognize their right to exist. You don’t have to like a certain style of poetry to recognize its right to exist.
In an article for Bustle entitled “Are 'InstaPoets' Destroying The Art Form Or Reviving It? A Defense Of Social Media Poetry”, E. CE. Miller writes:
One need only be reminded of the Beat poets — similarly maligned writers categorized by a folksy moniker and reduced, in their time, to non-conforming hedonists whose work was generally considered undeveloped, experimental, spontaneous junk. Yet, love them or hate them, few would make the case that writers like Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac don’t deserve their place on the shelves of enduring, important literature. In time, is it not likely that Kaur, Lovelace, Waheed, and others will join them? Perhaps the Instapoets are nothing more or less in 2018 than what the Beat poets were in 1950: neither a corruption of poetry, nor a revival, but simply a band of writers doing what writers and creatives have always done: examining their present moment and turning that moment into art.
In this same Bustle article, the author mentions how IG style poetry is derided as “confessional chick-lit” or “confessional click bait.” We are familiar with this off-hand sexism. Newer though is the repurposing of “confessional” to belittle and/or brush off poetry that seems too personal to be poetic. When someone says something sounds “confessional” today we now assume they’re dissing the work as opposed to putting it on a pedestal alongside work by the great Confessionals from the era of Plath, Sexton, and Lowell.
On the subject of sexism and men in the IG style poetics movement, let me quote again from the Bustle article:
“Young” and “female” to mean “too young” and “too female”, and therefore not capable of or interested in engaging with serious poetry.”
[…]
Certainly, there are plenty of male — or, presumably male, in this anonymous online world — Instapoets as well, several who have risen to similar levels of pop-stardom as Instapoetry’s women writers: Tyler Knott Gregson, Christopher Poindexter, Michael Faudet, R.M. Drake, RM Broderick, Atticus. Yet, on the whole, they’re subject to far less criticism. When they are critiqued, those critiques rarely go viral. Though the vast majority of Instapoets — male or female — explore similar themes: love and lust, relationships and heartbreak, identity and empowerment, it is too-often only the female Instapoets for whom such themes are reductive.
[…]
Their work has been called contrived, reductive, formulaic, shallow, lacking in both form and content, transient and trivial, low-brow and cliché. They’ve been accused of everything from unoriginality to blatant plagiarism; critiqued for their accessibility, sharability, and marketability. They’re mocked through memes and social media profiles that parody their work. Poets who themselves have suffered limited success use online forums to bemoan the post-graduate writing workshops that cost more than the average first collection of poetry earns, while these Instapoets clog up the market with their minimalist one-liners. Bestselling authors take to Twitter to disparage the Instapoets under the thin guise of thoughtful discourse. Critiques range from actual thoughtful discourse to outright bullying. Even those who tepidly recognize the value these writers hold in the literary sphere are careful to clarify that while they might enjoy the occasional dose of Instagram poetry, their shelves are still stocked with Frost, Whitman, Eliot, Keats, Plath, and Ginsberg.
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People love to hate on teenage girls
In a blog post for The Guardian, “Rupi Kaur: the inevitable backlash against Instagram's favourite poet”, Priya Khaira-Hanks writes:
Kaur and Waheed, alongside Warsan Shire, Yrsa Daley-Ward and Amanda Lovelace, are examples of a new style that blends the spontaneity and rawness of a teenage girl’s Tumblr with the poise and profundity of lyric poetry. These authors write about shared themes: anger at how the world treats young women, especially women of colour; defiance in the face of dismissal; celebrations of modern femininity.
In this same article, Hanks identifies an IG style poetics “formula” in the following manner: “[…] writers have hit upon a winning formula: rupturing short confessional pieces with erratic line breaks to share hard-won truths.” Many articles, even those that seem to hold themselves up as evenhanded, when taking on the world of “InstaPoetry”, almost inevitably are filled with loaded language that not so subtlety takes aim at the work and those who write it.[9]
A HuffPost article on the poet Atticus furthers the above point. Although, in this case, clearly the author of the piece had no intention of making Atticus (or his work) come off looking impressive. The work is described as “polished, consumer-ready.” And, “The poetry might be bad, but it is too inoffensive and nonspecific to alienate.” And, “He’s prone to maudlin images that wouldn’t be out of place in a country song.” This same HuffPost article describes IG style poetry in general as, “bland, generic, aesthetically pleasing, and therefore the perfect projection screen for readers’ desires.” There is mention that the topics IG poets tend to address include: “love, heartbreak, romance, desire.”
Self-publishing your way to Celebrity [or] Selling yourself to live
We’re living in a time when if you have a good marketing mind you can forge ahead on your own. You likely will still want outside editorial feedback (a sounding board). Apart from this most basic level of making sure your writing is where you want it to be, you may well be in the position of doing all the po biz[10] legwork on your own. In this case, what I mean by legwork specifically involves social media blasts (PR & marketing). This path is for those with a specific temperament and, dare I say, something of a Type-A personality. You must be confident and comfortable approaching others (both online and IRL) saying essentially, “Look, I have this thing and I think you should want to check it out.” Many writers and poets tend to be a little timid, sometimes introverted, and may not have a personality that makes it easy to “market yourself.” The very concept of “marketing yourself” will leave a bad taste in many a reader’s mouth. These writers/poets really do need someone else to help them get the word out about a new book (or even a new poem they’ve written and would like to share via the less traditionally sanctioned gatekept methods of publication). So, if you’re someone who feels bad doing the business end of promoting your work it’s important to ask yourself questions to determine early on what will be the ideal path for you.
If you are comfortable and confident doing sales on your own and do not have the kinds of qualms that make it nearly impossible for some writers/poets to proceed in this fashion, there’s no reason to feel bad or be judged for this aspect of your personality and skillset. We all have creativity inside of us. If a person is making use of their creative mind to put words into the world and also happens to excel in the business/marketing/promotion realm it’s not fair for others to insist that this somehow counts as a deleterious character flaw.
It’s not exclusively IG style poets who have a proven track record of talent in the area of self-promotion. The commonality I’ve seen is that many poets also scoff at the efforts and ability of poets who publish via more traditional means when said poets engage in the “selling themselves.” For the sake of clarity, let’s consider the way musicians often have a merch table when they tour. Some musicians run these tables themselves, other times the table is manned by employees at the venue. What’s on the table? Well, in the past it was usually CDs and vinyl. Possibly DVDs from a live show. Nowadays, you’ll still see the vinyl. You’ll also see stickers, pins, maybe a poster, tour shirts, hoodies, and so forth. If you look at a company that sells promotional items[11], you’ll see there’s a nearly endless number of possibilities for what you can customize. Do you want to promote your new book with Post-It notes? Well, the option is on the table. It was recently recommended to me that I think about book publication as a “non-event.” This is certainly one option. If the book arrives and isn’t an instant success, an instant classic, perhaps you may be devastatingly disappointed. Maybe you expected a substantial book tour and it didn’t come together. Maybe you expected to sell a ton of copies and that hasn’t happened right away. Maybe you hoped for some positive reviews and no one seemed to care enough write them. Well, it’s important to remember you’re not alone. It’s also important to keep in mind there may be something you can proactively[12] do about it.
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Be the Influencer you imagine yourself to be
“Everything I do, I do it big.” -Wiz Khalifa (Black and Yellow)
“I’m the greatest man, I said that before I knew I was” -Drake (Under Ground Kings)
…referencing Muhammed Ali: “I am the greatest… I said that even before I knew I was.”
When a newly-minted book arrives in boxes is when the poet/writer with the top-grade self-promotion toolkit is going to go into overdrive. Actually, well before the book “arrives” the expert self-promoter will be pushing hard to make sure their audience is aware that the book is coming soon. There are myriad ways to go about doing so thoroughly covered elsewhere, I’m sure. The point I aim to get across here is that we’re doing an unfair disservice to those with certain skillsets when we disparage them for areas in which they happen to be talented.
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What do we want IG style poets to be doing? Do we want them to simply not write? That’s clearly unfair. I’d put it squarely in the category of unethical to dissuade someone from writing.[13] Dissuading someone from publishing is a more nuanced matter.
The real question seems to be why is this material rising to the top? And yet that’s still not actually the real question, because IG style poetry does not compete on the same playing field as other forms of poetics. It’s been acknowledged that interest and sales numbers for Rupi Kaur’s milk and honey has resulted in the positioning of a table with poetry near the front of bookstores. This is something that has not been common in recent decades. Poets lament the books that tend to be on this table: Kaur, Homer, Shakespeare, Bukowski, Keats, maybe Mary Oliver or Billy Collins. The concern comes, I believe, in part because we’re mostly talking about “classics”, along with what’s been popular for quite a while now, and still the majority of these folks are dead white guys. Another aspect is that we’re not seeing even prominent contemporary poets among these books. Maybe there’s a book by the current Poet Laureate, maybe not. Maybe there’s a poetry collection by a local author, maybe not. Again and again I hear about the lack of representation of exceptional poets published by small presses. But, also commonly noted, the reality is that in all likelihood the success of Kaur or another IG style poet has zero impact (negative or positive) on sales or readership of small press or even mainstream big name publishing house poets. Few to none will go to the bookshop looking for Kaur (or other IG style poetry) and walk out with a collection by W.H. Auden or Marianne Moore.
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Gateway Poetry?
It remains unclear if reading IG style poetry is a “gateway” to reading other forms of poetry. In an article by Laura Byager for Mashable entitled “Roll your eyes all you like, but Instagram poets are redefining the genre for millennials”, Byager quotes Dr. Eleanor Spencer-Regan, who is identified as “digital director of the Institute of Poetry and Poetics at Durham University”: “We talk about Harry Potter as a 'gateway' book, and I suspect that these poems can work in the same way — to make young people curious about poe [sic]” […] “Poetry will no longer be something remote or intimidating, but an art form that these young readers feel they can claim as their own.” […] “What the poets of Instagram tend to have in common is what I would call emotional relatability or accessibility, and a tone and vocabulary that is reminiscent of the self-help or self-improvement movement — many read like motivational quotes.” […] “[…] the Instagram poets have, in fact, succeeded at securing more diversity in a genre traditionally perceived to be dominated by white, straight people (both when it comes to both readers and writers).”
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Chasing Celebrity[14]
“oh my god I must be famous” -Lil Wayne (Famous)[15]
“I am a workhorse.” -r.H. Sin
It's important to note here that I don't get the impression that Sin, or any other IG style poet, is being remotely insincere making a comment like this. I believe that not only does he mean what he says, but also that what he does is in fact work extremely hard. Let’s not get overly embroiled in personal definitions of “hard work.” At the end of the day, what matters is that what Sin is doing is requires effort, is time-consuming and, I expect, is rather exhausting. The effort to create, to compose, to embody the persona of influencer that is expected of you, cannot be without its own set of fears, doubts, labor.
Originally published in 1936, Dale Carnegie's “How to Win Friends and Influence People” perpetually hangs out in the Top 20 list on Amazon Charts’ “The Top 20 Most Sold & Most Read Books of the Week.” This is no accident. And this is nothing new. Americans have long been concerned with having the right friends and power. The Lox released “Money, Power, Respect” in 1998 and, so far as I’m concerned, that could replace our current, badly outmoded, National Anthem. Sure, there’s plenty of lyrics on this track that are not 100% considerate; however, the mentality is exceptionally American and, unlike our current National Anthem, offers such sage advice as, “plan for the future, 'cause you figure / you gon' be older / way longer than you gon' be younger.” Just sayin.
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When did we start saying IRL, anyway?
It crept up on us. At least, us older generations. The Gen Z kids (current definitions put this group as born between the mid-90s through the early 2000s) grew up as the “iPhone Generation”. I like to also think of them as a “Post-9/11 Generation” and “post-2008 recession” because those events heavily impacted millennial thinking. The iPhone generation has been interrogated by yours truly on a semi-regular basis and, in turn, I can report by way of informal analysis that these folks are pretty darn comfortable with the way their IRL and digital lives are fused. They actually laugh and/or jeer at the whole insistence that these two ways of existing in the world differ. For the older generations, I think it’s safe to say it’s fairly clear cut. We differentiate between time spent with others in person, or at work, or at a store, etc etc, versus time we spend texting or even FaceTiming. It just *feels* different to us.
How does this relate to IG style poetics? Considering specifically Instagram as a platform, when you’re scrolling through your ‘gram feed, double-tapping[16] presumably semi-mindlessly (or perhaps extremely intentionally, as a millennial it’s harder to know the cool thing to do), it’s not a relaxing (or, dare is day, pleasurable) experience if content is not seamless and, in turn, takes you out of the general vibe. Bearing this in mind, IG style poetics are crafted (yes, crafted) specifically keeping in mind the way in which users engage with this medium. Successful InstaPoets are those who have been able to grow and maintain their followers (presumably not everyone mutes “posts and story” and so isn’t following just to follow). Successful IG poets reach their audience and their audience responds with some double-tap love. You can add a vast number of tags (hashtags) to your ‘gram posts, but you’ll see that someone as prominent as Rupi Kaur doesn’t actually need to do this. Kaur simple tags “milk and honey” or another one of her physical texts.
Let me draw out a comparison. Kaur wrote a series of poems/posts that became milk and honey, the physical book. Kaur continues to tag “milk and honey” on her IG posts in a manner that indicates “milk and honey” is a brand and reinforces her status as an influencer. This suggests that “milk and honey” (the brand) continues to evolve. Not entirely dissimilarly, in the pre-release phase for The Life of Pablo (TLOP), Kanye West sent a number of tweets out to his millions of followers essentially testing the water. An example of an obvious probe would be those that seemed to be about whether or not people liked TLOP as an album title. Ye has implied he uses social media platforms as part of his artistic process as well as to “crowdsource his self-esteem”. More to the point, after the release of The Life of Pablo, Yeezy released new versions of tracks and made statements about how the conceptual album was “evolving” and “alive”. Kanye and Kaur are brands and influencers. A certain President, known for his fondness for the Twitter platform, would have to agree that attention plays a key role in your ability to influence. Like the old adage about the tree that falls in the forest, it doesn’t matter what you’re saying if no one is paying attention[17].
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It's possible to argue anything
Take this for example. Israel has been referred to as “the land of milk and honey” because it was foretold in scripture that Moses would lead the Israelites to such a place. One could claim that Rupi Kaur is therefore appropriating Jewish culture when she calls her collection milk and honey. Even if Kaur did intentionally draw the reference, what is wrong with doing so? Poetry is associative, that is, poetry takes things and compares them with other things[18]. It’s no accident people like to say “good artists copy; great artists steal.” This quote, to further prove the point, is often attributed to quite a few household names. Does it matter who said it first? Does it matter who said it at all? Yes and no.
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If the IRL Self & Digital Self are fully intertwined, why then is it still better to be in the print version of a literary journal?
In the documentary #Poetry, available on YouTube, we’re informed “No one ever says Insta-Poet as if it's a good thing.” In reading about IG style poetics, this has been my experience as well. What seemed more interesting though was a comment about how it’s still considered better to be in the print version of a literary journal than the online journal. This is a little bit confounding coming from those willing to self-publish their work on social media platforms, right? But I think that’s the point. Even the IG style poet camp thinks the disparity is ridiculous, anachronistic, and that literary journals, and “traditional” poets, have not caught up to modern times. Also interesting here, as a side note, is that while IG style poets are optimized for success in mainstream culture, these are the poets who are actually experimental (in a way), whereas “traditional”, in this scenario, tends to refer to those who take more conventional paths toward publication—poets who pursue an MFA and go into teaching are the contemporary normative poets. This divide between The Ivory Tower of Academia and alternative methods for pursuing a life in poetry are becoming increasingly nuanced and fraught with questions of authenticity, privilege, and tradition.
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Your 15 minutes
“When I’m fucked up that’s the real me” -The Weeknd (The Hills)
There are new ways to achieve your “15 minutes” of fame and, furthermore, it looks like something you can actually achieve if only you can figure out the right way to market yourself to the world.
I’d argue that today’s 15 minutes tends to be infinite, but that, for the majority of those who manage to achieve it, you’re famous in the manner of a YouTube celebrity—famous for the same thing for all time.
Listening to The Weeknd makes me think about fame and celebrity. The track “Often” signals the need for repetition to indicate legitimacy. This is where the “What have you done for me lately?” issue comes into play. You need to rep that you’re the real deal on a regular basis or you’re not longer relevant. This, in my opinion, is the true takeaway of The Weeknd repeating, “Often, often, girl I do this often.” In 2018, by some accounts, a musician needed to release a new album every six weeks in order to maintain their status as a top performer. The idea being that a two-month-old album was already dated. Why? Partly, I’d argue, is the need for those who religiously keep up on what is brand new to be able to say to those who do not keep up quite as eagerly to say things along the lines of, “Oh you ain’t up on this?” The other reason is that we live in a crazy fast-paced reality in which it’s essential for our artists to produce content that is closely aligned with cultural moments. At least some top artists are seemingly expected to weigh in on these cultural moments. So, for example, Kanye West is known to alter or write entirely new lyrics shortly before the release of an album. For some this may sound like shoddy craftsmanship, for others it’s immediately obvious that Ye is simply committed to updating his material to be on the pulse of what’s going on in society. If a hurricane just devastated your hometown and you release an album two weeks later and fail to mention the significant impact of this hurricane—are you doing your job? This is a legitimate question. The reason we can ask this of our artists today is because of the ability to quickly release/publish material. A song can be recorded today and streamed tomorrow. A poem can be submitted to an editor today and also published today, online. While not all poets write occasional poetry (by which I mean poetry for an occasion), or poetry that directly references the news or politics of now, poets are generally expected to write for the times in which they live, and therefore the material of our consensus reality— what’s in the zeitgeist is expected to be addressed. A 2019 article for The Guardian, entitled “Poetry sales soar as political millennials search for clarity”, says as much stating, “people are reading and sharing poetry not to passively reflect on what’s going on in society, but as a way of engaging.”
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A few words before leaving the door open for further discussion
As a member of the literary community, I fully admit there is some fun to be had in spitting venom at what you do not like. The things you say you do not like act as counterpoints to your own preferences. We can acknowledge though that it’s often easier to say what it is you do not like as opposed to the harder work of justifying why it is that you like something. But, in any case, there’s a leap from saying you do not like something to saying that something is not what someone else claims it is. If a person wants to call what they write poetry, then it is poetry.
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Author’s Note:
This essay was written in early 2019. InstaPoetry was both popular and controversial at the time. As a historical note, it seems important to reference that this essay was conceived of and written before the COVID-19 pandemic.
References (& Further Reading):
Miller, E. CE, Bustle. “Are ‘InstaPoets’ Destroying The Art Form or Reviving It? A Defense of Social Media Poetry. 21 Mar. 2018.
https://www.bustle.com/p/are-instapoets-destroying-the-art-form-reviving-it-a-defense-of-social-media-poetry-8530426
Hill, Faith. Yuan, Karen. The Atlantic. “How Instagram Poetry Saved Poetry: Social media is turning an art form into an industry.” 15 Oct. 2018.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/rupi-kaur-instagram-poet-entrepreneur/572746/
Fallon, Claire. HuffPost. “Instagram Poetry Is A Hucker’s Paradise.” 4 Oct. 2018. (Updated).
Khaira-Hanks, Priya. The Guardian (Books blog). “Rupi Kaur: the inevitable backlash against Instagram's favourite poet.” 4 Oct. 2017.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/oct/04/rupi-kaur-instapoets-the-sun-and-her-flowers
Posner, Menachem. Chabad. “Why is Israel called the land of "Milk and Honey"?”.
Saienni, Lindsay. Medium. “Instagram Poets Are Ruining Everything (I’m Looking At You R.M. Drake).” 26 Jan. 2016.
Campbell, Erik. Rattle. “Playing Makeup, Wearing Guitars.” 8 Jan. 2019.
Marikar, Sheila. The New Yorker. “The Life of an Instagram Poet.” 8 Mar. 2017.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-life-of-an-instagram-poet
Wikipedia. “15 minutes of fame.” Accessed January/February 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_minutes_of_fame
Byager, Laura. Mashable. “Roll your eyes all you like, but Instagram poets are redefining the genre for millennials.” 19 Oct. 2018.
https://mashable.com/article/instagram-poetry-democratise-genre/#316hMCmYesqb
Watts. Rebecca. PN Review 239, Vol. 44, No. 3. January-February 2018. “The Cult of the Noble Amateur.”
https://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=10090
Ferguson, Donna. The Guardian. “Poetry sales soar as political millennials search for clarity.” 21 Jan. 2019.
Teika. The Book Stewards. “The problem with poetry.” 30 Jan. 2019.
Vedantam, Shankar. Cohen, Rhaina. Boyle, Tara. Schmidt, Jennifer. Hidden Brain (NPR). “One Head, Two Brains: How The Brain's Hemispheres Shape The World We See.”
VS podcast
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/series/142241/vs-podcast
[1] Don Share reiterates these points in an episode of the podcast VS hosted by Danez Smith and Franny Choi entitled “Don Share vs. 150,000 poems” released on March 5, 2019.
[2] Working definition of “Generation Z” (aka. “Gen Z”) for the purposes of this essay: a person “born between the mid-90s through the early 2000s.”
[3] During my participation in this community I believe I successfully managed to avoid the Hawthorne effect.
[4] I don’t mean this in the traditional manner of “sound.” IG style poems don’t use sound in the manner of Dickinson, for example.
[5] Loosely a Bill Shakes reference.
[6] I fully encourage reading the Rattle essay in its entirety as well as others mentioned in References.
[7] What follows is a (not comprehensive) list of some better-known (at the time of writing) IG style poets: Lang Leav, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Cleo Wade, Atticus, R.M. Drake, Charly Cox, Nayyirah Waheed, Tyler Knott Gregson, Amanda Lovelace, r.H. Sin, Warsan Shire, Nikita Gill
[8] In his 2019 interview with David Letterman, Kanye West notes, “If you guys want these crazy ideas, crazy stages, crazy music, and this crazy way of thinking, there's a chance it might come from a crazy person.” I encourage considering this in the context of the interview and, specifically, Kanye’s thoughts on taking prescription medications to manage his mental health.
[9] The disjointed line breaks are a curious element of IG style poetics.
[10] Common shorthand for “poetry business”
[11] Amsterdam Printing:
https://www.amsterdamprinting.com/
[12] We all hate this cliché corporate speak by now, but you get my point
[13] Doesn’t mean I don’t love Flannery O’Connor’s famous line: “There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
[14] Considered titling this sub-section “Chasing Celebrity is American AF”
[15] “I was your main man, ‘til I went mainstream” – additional lyrics on Lil Wayne’s “Famous”
[16] As an older millennial teaching myself how to use Instagram I didn’t know you could double-tap to “heart” a post (IG’s equivalent of the Facebook “like” button) until I heard about it on a podcast. This reminds me of the inorganic way we tend learn about new music as we age.
[17] I feel a need to add that just because no one *appears* to be paying attention is not an excuse to say anything offensive, inflammatory, threatening, dangerous, or otherwise intended to cause harm.
[18] Refer to Billy Collins’ poem “The Trouble with Poetry” in which, with his usual wit, we are told the reason why the job of Poet will never be complete: “And how will it ever end? / unless the day finally arrives / when we have compared everything in the world / to everything else in the world, // and there is nothing left to do / but quietly close our notebooks / and sit with our hands folded on our desks.”