To not understand the hype around Rupi Kaur poems? (examples attached)

[instagrampoets]

Sorry couldn't find a poetry board (though if there is one please redirect me!)

I just don't understand the hype around these poems? Her book collection "Milk and Honey" was huge, especially amongst young people and I'm wondering if this is a niche of poetry I'm missing the depth of. Most of it just sounds like a passing thought, or an Instagram caption.

Sorry, don't want to sound like a snob or portray myself as a poetry aficionado but I'm interested to see if anyone else can ascribe any deeper meaning to her work or if I'm just thinking too hard about it all!

Dreadful, shallow stuff. I wouldn't even call it poetry.

[quote SionnachRua]@Lobelia123 how is it sneering? People are allowed to dislike her poems and her style of writing, it's not a crime. Life would be boring if we all liked the same things.

Might be meaningful to her and others - great for them - but if other people think it's a load of wank then that's ok too. I can't stand the writing of the Harry Potter books, many people adore them. That's ok.[/quote]
We actually completely agree, as thats exactly the point I was trying to make. As a non poetry reader, I really enjoyed Milk and Honey....would love to get some recommendations on other stuff to try so if anyone has anything they enjoyed and can suggest, please share

“The day he moved out was terrible –
That evening she went through hell.
His absence wasn’t a problem
But the corkscrew had gone as well.”

― Wendy Cope, Serious Concerns

The poem above is kind of how you feel at the end of several relationships not working out. You get your priorities right.

to add: I doubt I will ever read that Milk and Honey book....

For people who like experimental poetry that forms a book, can I recomend The Emperor's Babe, by Bernadine Evaristo? It's a wonderful novel/epic poem, broken down in to many, many shorts ones. There is one hell of a lot of depth and analysis in it and I loved it.

I'm not sure what that is OP, but I'd not considered it poetey either.

It’s a case of Emperor’s New Clothes for me, in fact it’s rubbish poetry imho.
Pleasant musings but that’s it.

Some people will write poetry that you like, some will write poetry you don’t.

Just because other people like it, doesn’t mean you have to.

I would have enjoyed her "poems" when I was 16 or so, the first poem in the OP would have resonated perfectly with my sentimental and hormone-driven moods. Two decades later I wonder why anyone calls this poetry. It's not the people who don't like her work who are pretentious, it's the people who call it poetry who are. They're just memes imo. Nothing wrong with publishing a book full of them, nothing wrong with buying the book and enjoying it - but don't call it poetry.

On the thread about shops we missed, Athena came up.
These 'poems' are just the very thing to be put over a picture of a wheat field at sunset and flogged to a student in the 1980s who was away from home with a student grant income for the first time.
Although I like to remember that we had higher standards.

if you lay
shit out like this
people will
call it
poetry

• gullible by teenytinydustinhoffman

@Lobelia123 The Emperor's Babe. I just posted it, but it sounds like what you're after. It's a blend of modern and ancient in its setting, with gorgeous use of language, but very readable. Key themes around sexuality, home, female strength and identity (but not in a woke way). It's made of hundreds of poems, but which flows together as a novel.

It's easily accessible, but you can add as many layers of meaning as you want to really.

All of you sneering at what is poetry and what is not, isn't it an expression of your life experiences and feelings, in many forms and styles, just as we as people are different in so many ways? Why is the way you express that acceptable as 'art' / 'poetry' or not, depending on some arbitrary high gilded standard?You all sound a bit pretentious and humourless to be honest.

I understand what you mean, and I definitely am quite a pretentious person by nature if I'm honest @Lobelia123. But similarly I think this style of writing is quite pretentious and affected too! I do still really love poetry and I love talking about it, and I'm interested in which poems of Kaur's struck a chord with you. I just haven't found any that I consider powerful yet, but I think I'm allowed to consider it a load of wank (as a PP eloquently put it ) just as you are allowed to consider it emotional and meaningful.

I would have enjoyed her "poems" when I was 16 or so, the first poem in the OP would have resonated perfectly with my sentimental and hormone-driven moods.

Yes, exactly @WomenAndVulvas. I think quite a few of her poems might be something I would have jotted down in an overpriced journal at 15 and been all-too-pleased with myself about. To me, it seems like poetry that's very proud of being poetry, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't hit below the surface enough for me to find it emotionally resonant

I have an exercise book of similar writings done when I was around 16 - I thought I was the new Sylvia Plath when I was just a daft teenager . This is what she is reminding me of.

Never heard of this person, but the poems read like the Internet memes to which I always want to reply with a cynical comment.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n10/clare-bucknell/instapoetry

Sorry this may upset those who enjoy Kaur's poetry but I thought it was quite entertaining!

now i understand
why
my student

who wrote almost nothing
– and the little she wrote
was bland and obvious –
expected me to be

enraptured
by her paltry
offerings

i had never heard of rupi kaur

It's trite, basically.

I have no problem with the use of lower case, but it has been done before and better, notably by American poet E. E. Cummings (as mentioned by a pp above) who was born in 1894. Rupi Kaur's poems seem insubstantial and derivative.

Hahahaha, @Labobo! Are you an English / creative writing teacher of some kind? If so I'd be interested to hear if this kind of "insta poetry" or style of writing is becoming more common

@TeenyTinyDustinHoffman

if you lay shit out like this people will call it poetry

• gullible by teenytinydustinhoffman

Essentially she found a niche on Instagram before it was really a niche and therefore it’s worked in her favour by being the first and being very savvy with it.

I would love to see if she writes other poetry, this is obviously written for commercial value with an audience that she knows will buy her books etc and if so, it’s a genius business model.

It’s supposed to be profound etc. I don’t think it is. I think her sentiments are often way off the mark. But they are ‘pretty’ and for a lot of people that’s all they want isn’t it? And there’s nothing wrong with that.

It really is subjective. I loved ‘Rabbit’ by Sophie Robinson, but that really isn’t for everyone either.

@instagrampoets

Hahahaha, *@Labobo*! Are you an English / creative writing teacher of some kind? If so I'd be interested to hear if this kind of "insta poetry" or style of writing is becoming more common

I used to, and listing Rupi Kaur as your favourite poet was invariably the same people who, when asked their favourite novel, named the A-level set texts. And when you said, ‘No, tell me something you didn’t read because school said you had to’, they looked blank. Or sometimes went back to the GCSE set texts.