I had the misfortune of being reminded just how bad modern popular poetry is the other day. Even then I hesitate to use the term popular but I did stumble across this book left in a sauna so someone had actually purchased it and taken it to another location so that says something. Here are two examples of poems from this book
if someone doesn’t have a heart
you can’t go around
offering them yours
and
imagine what we could accomplish if
we didn’t have to spend our energy
protecting ourselves from
society’s rapist problem
The ‘poet’ in question is Rupi Kaur and this is her Wikipedia entry
Rupi Kaur is a Canadian poet, illustrator, photographer, and author. She is known for her viral Instagram posts of menstrual blood stains and her three collections of poetry, Milk and Honey, The Sun and Her Flowers, and Home Body.
“Instagram posts of menstrual blood stains”
Who published this trash you might wonder? Some small middling left wing publisher barely scrapping by? Perhaps the ‘poet’ herself using Amazon?
No, no. It was Simon&Schuster.
One of the biggest publishing houses left in the world. Oh and according to them this ‘poet’ the absolute dogshit above has sold 11 million copies (across three collections).
If ever I have been rocked back to earth about my own self financed project Atop The Cliffs or my own book published with Imperium Press it was at that moment reading those poems.
Dogshit.
There is no better description of my reaction. That visceral disgust at having stepped in it, that irritation at the person who didn’t pick up after their dog, the repugnant smell that rises up. Then the attempt to clean it off, to find water to sanitize the shoe and remove the filth.
We’re all a bit insulated here on this side of things - the poems we see and read tend to be good. Though admittedly any 14 year old’s love poem from the mid 90s would have been better than Rupi Kaur’s efforts above. Yet the facts remain - the facts are depressing and brutal. She’s sold 11 million copies and has an estimated networth of 1.2million$.
My 22 year old car that I drive had the catalytic converter stolen from it this year, a $2700 repair bill - a year of my poetry book sales would not cover that. Don’t get me wrong I’m not in this for the money but I know I write better poetry than her, I know more people would enjoy it. It stings when these things happen and then you are reminded at just the abject state of things.
The blackpilling aside there are reasons for hope. People are going to be hungry for better work. These flash-in-the-pan menstrual blood snapping poets won’t last. They’ll be forgotten about or perhaps remembered as the butt of a joke in the far future. Meanwhile we push on, we build our own networks that will one day become the institutions our great great grandchildren are part of.
We won’t just wash away the dogshit, we’ll have something far greater to replace it.
Want to support good poetry? Buy my book
https://www.imperiumpress.org/shop/horizons-of-iron/
https://www.amazon.com/Horizons-Iron-Imperium-Arthur-Powell/dp/1922602566
Had an acquaintance a few years back who published some books of poetry in the style of Rupi Kaur. I’m afraid to say it wasn’t quality that got Ms. Kaur to the top, so imitation didn’t work in my friend’s favour. Alas.
Sometimes I feel all we need is a dissident marketing team. We’re overflowing with good products. Certainly ones more worthy of success than the book you found.
Rupi Kaur's poetry is notoriously bad and has been mocked on the internet for years. But many poets we think of today as being profound were not highly appreciated in their lifetimes. True gifts are often against the grain of their time.