Rupi Kaur
 

I couldn't find a discussion here, so forgive me if I missed something obvious. PBS News Hour did an piece on her yesterday.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/po...s-in-a-new-way

I'm curious about what it is in her poetry--so obviously cliché, but rooted in real passion and an interesting life story--that connects to so many. Is there something in her style, her form, that other poets can learn from? Can she be the harbinger of a poetic resurgence? Or is her work just a product of a consumer culture that's meant to be consumed and tossed aside--and thus so treacle-laden--that nothing of it can be appropriated into work that is meant to stick with us?

I received one of Raur's books for my birthday, and the same book again from someone else for Christmas, from two well-intentioned people who assumed that the bestselling poetry book of the year would be the perfect gift for me, because they know I like poetry.

(Which is, BTW, also how, in past years, I have made the acquaintance of books by such poets as Mattie J.T. Stepanek, which I found to be about as juvenile as one might expect a book written by a kid to be, plus a few Pulitzer prizewinners that I found impenetrable.)

Frankly, I like Raur's work much more than I have most years' poetry bestsellers.

Raur uses a lot of clichés. But so do popular songs. Clichés become clichés because they are powerful and memorable and meaningful to a lot of people. Orwell's essay on Kipling gives substantial attention to this point, and not in a complimentary way: "A good bad poem is a graceful monument to the obvious," "records...some emotion which very nearly every human being can share," "is a vulgar thought vigorously expressed," etc. Orwell also mentioned the intersection of clichés and sentimentality in such popular works: "however sentimental it may be, its sentiment is ‘true’ sentiment in the sense that you are bound to find yourself thinking the thought it expresses sooner or later; and then, if you happen to know the poem, it will come back into your mind and seem better than it did before."

That said, a large part of Raur's success is precisely that she's NOT exploring "some emotion which very nearly every human being can share." She is focusing on gender and culture-specific experiences familiar to many women and minorities (and other used and abused people), who may not have seen such parts of their own lives represented in literature before.

You and I have. Many poets these days are writing about "edgy" topics and minority experiences. But they tend to write mainly for a highbrow audience, which is regarded by many poets as the only audience that really counts. Raur is writing about these things in a way actually designed to be accessible to people like her own young, brown, female, first-person narrator, rather than just to connoisseurs of literature (for whom imagining themselves as young, brown, and/or female may be just an exotic and somewhat unpleasant vacation, rather than a lived reality).

Most poetry--even here at Eratosphere--is directed to a fairly limited and erudite audience, who won't need footnotes to catch clever classical allusions, recognize and appreciate arcane forms, etc. (Look how insulted some readers get if we have the temerity to give them a footnote that they didn't need.)

But the over-educated are not the only section of humanity that needs what poetry can offer.

In writing about traumatic personal events that many others have endured, Raur is giving a voice to the voiceless. True, the harrowing nature of the content sometimes--okay, often--overwhelms the craft. But at least she's actually speaking about these things in a way that others find meaningful, which is more than I've managed to do with all my careful craft and avoidance of sentimentality.

So good for her. I'm sincerely glad that she's reaching an appreciative audience--one that, by the way, she actually worked very hard to cultivate, all by herself, through years of posting social media content that real people found accessible and relevant to their own lives.

Raur built a huge social media following before she published her first poetry book, and therefore had a ready-made market. Yes, I know, there may be some sour grapes because that's not the way most of us poets do it. Most of us spend years honing our craft and carefully placing our poems in this and that journal, and we only think about building a fan base after we finally publish a book, and suddenly realize just how much space the unsold ones will be taking up if we can't manage to unload them at readings and such.

But the spotlight that Raur is getting is not taking any attention from poets that I enjoy more. It's not as if those poets would be getting marketed to that wider demographic if Raur weren't getting such buzz right now.

Julie, welcome back! It's so good to hear your voice again.

Thanks! I did almost nothing poetry-related for most of last year. I read Rupi Kaur, though. :-)

I did find some of her poems (and drawings) in Milk and Honey genuinely moving. Many of her poems are free-verse epigrams, which, like haiku, probably seem more void of craft than they really are.

Just to agree with RCL. It's nice to see you posting.
Poetry is a big tent, and anything that makes folks more interested in it is likely to be a good thing in my book. Let them open the door on illumination.
Not that I've read Rupi Kaur.

Cheers,
John

I listened to her interview. She is obviously a highly-intelligent young person who is doing what she loves out of what seems to be sincere motives. She states clearly and maturely that she is not interested in the literary world. She isn't writing in a furious attempt to become one of the "immortals." In a way, she's braver and wiser than the thousands of young people who have paid for graduate writing degrees in hopes of entering the club of those the literary journals deign to consider worthwhile. Who stands a greater chance of wasting their lives?

I had seen snippets of her poetry recently. I was not impressed. I watched the PBS video and again was not impressed. I get the feeling she is a manifestation of what social media feigns to be: applicable to everything. Thoughtful. Important. (Though I understand that her followers who share her same affinity for insta-this and twitter-that see in her writing an easy resemblance to what, until now, has been the art of writing poetry. I'm ok with coining her as a "social media-generated poet", but can't find much to glean from what I've seen of her work.)

I follow Julie Steiner, so it's good to hear your voice again Julie.

My sad ego presses me to say that of course, the poetry is bad. It's interesting in a socio-historical way that the new Rod McKuen is a female immigrant from South Asia, but the poetry isn't as memorable as most pop songs. My earlier comment was about her awareness of what she's doing.

It is nice indeed to hear from you again, Julie. What you say is true I think. If anything, she increases the segment of the general public to whom poetry speaks and, for that reason, who are more likely to look into other poets besides. It is another avenue to the world of poetry; the more avenues by which to engage the public the better in my opinion. Engagement with some is better than engagement with no poetry. They who read mediocre poetry are at least more likely to engage with better at some point as compared with those who read none at all.

Added later: Unless, possibly I guess, it is of such magnitudinous aridity so as to lead not a soul with breath to a single better piece of poetry whatsoever (even if it had such effect for no more than one individual on the planet, that would be a good thing). But even if it does nobody any good, it does nobody any harm, so I do not care.

I'm a little fixated on highbrow. What does that mean, exactly? Educated, that you do in fact believe in dinosaurs and go to fancy places? Really I'm not sure. And only academics would break things down as such, so surely you don't mean them (or us)? There's a lot of latitude there. I don't know this poet, but am certain to look her up now. (And good to see you back too, Julie.)

I met a boy recently and I awoke one morning to find on his bedside table a book of Kaur's. Though he is not literary, he knows that she isn't very good and that the subjects are cliche, but likes her anyway in a sort of guilty pleasure way for people whose main interests are not poetry. I think the majority of her readers acknowledge that she isn't great. They like her because poetry for them (by which I mean, non-poets) is just a way to express themselves with no claims to high art. Kaur doesn't bother me and in a few years will be forgotten.

More dishonest are the academy poets (found at AWP, MFA programs, and all the right journals) who defend her work because she is South Asian and female and therefore beyond criticism (as Kazim Ali did in a recent, cowardly essay). Or those same poets who believe writers like Vuong are high art when such writers are barely more literate than Kaur.

I like Kaur. She has managed to mock so many academy poets by refusing to do any of the things poets are supposed to do--read each other's work, buy each other's books, publish in journals, attend conferences--while coming out ahead of them all, if coming out ahead means selling the most books.

I do hope coming out ahead doesn't mean selling the most books.
Cowardly is a good word, there are plenty of trimmers on this planet.

John

First of all. Hi Julie!

Secondly, I hadn't heard of Rupi Kaur until I read this thread and Andrew's description intrigued me. Then I found some of her poems online (12 poems that will make me read her book, apparently) and I have to say they're worse than I thought they were going to be. I love raw emotion in poetry. I love simplicity in poetry. But these things seem barely distinguishable from the sort of 'inspirational' memes that appear all over the internet and social media, usually with a sunset or a cat in the background (apart from the line 'your body /is a museum /of natural disasters' -- I liked that).

I watched the video. She seems very intelligent and sincere and, as she says herself, not at all interested in the literary world. I don't at all begrudge her hard-earned success, or think it 'unjustified', and I have no doubt that people do find her poems genuinely inspirational. Which is great. But it's pretty poor poetry to be selling in the hundreds of thousands. And whether she's white /Asian/black/male/female/gay/ straight / has lived a charmed life or a harrowing one, there's no point pretending it isn't.

I agree with Julie that her success isn't going to take any kind of spotlight away from other more 'deserving' poets. But I disagree, I'm afraid, that exposure to her poetry will necessarily act as a 'gateway' to 'better' poetry for many young people (maybe some!). This could be the cynicism of nearly two decades of teaching 11 to 18 year olds in high schools talking, but in my experience teenagers have always gone gaga for this sort of stuff. But break out the Shakespeare and Keats and it's just more 'work'. They see the two things as completely separate. The rare students who do get interested in poetry don't need the Rupi Kaur 'gateway'; their eyes will light up at the Shakespeare. As they should! I kind of feel the same about YA fiction, in a way. When I was a young teen in the 80s (grumpy old man alert) I went straight from reading children's books to Stephen King, Poe, Dickens and Charlotte Bronte. Because there wasn't really a 'gateway': a heavily marketed 'in-between' genre aimed specifically at me. King, as the 'contemporary' choice of the time, was massive among reading teens in the 80s and he's a much better writer than the John Greens and Suzanne Collins of the world. I think things like YA and poetry like Kaur's have got more young people reading (which is good), but that they also have the effect of locking people into a sort of arrested development when it comes to reading, so lots of people get into their 30s having never progressed beyond this stuff. But then again, so what?

Anyway, that's my incredibly boring opinion.

Good luck to Rupi Kaur, I like her doodles.

Of course, it certainly will not necessarily be a gateway for everyone, but there is the remote possibility it might be for some few, I should think. If not, oh well.

Forget "gateway poetry." Many readers need direct acknowledgment of what they feel, in words they understand and immediately relate to. Why can't we accept that each reader needs what he or she needs, wants what he or she wants? Poetry has never been "one size fits all." It has always been "whatever works for you." Let a million flowers bloom. I'd like to see that.

Rupi Kaur doesn't provide the kind of complex poetic experience I enjoy most, but I don't think that what she offers is worthless either. Certain writers of popular music have spoken to me in a way that moved me. Do I think that, as poems, those songs beat Shakespeare? No. But I don't want to give up the pleasures of great songs, either.

Susan

I agree, Susan. I think it is interesting that, in the articles and comment sections I have come across, her critics make the assumption that the way her readers experiece this work must be shallow or fleeting because the medium/style isn't "high" art. It is an underestimate of many things at once.

Lest I be misconstrued, I believe it is inherently valuable that multitudes themselves relish Kaur (or any other poet for that matter.) So to be clear, Kaur satisfying other readers is sufficient of itself to constitute a valuable thing, to be respected and countenanced. My taste has no bearing on the good, which I recognize, she does for a great many. I wish her all the success in the world; I would deny her nothing.

I questioned whether her rise might increase readership of poetry that I personally appreciate; whatever the answer be as to this, it neither augments nor diminishes the value of her delighting other readers, which remains ever as much a good of itself, regardless. Even if I should derive nothing from her myself, I encourage the tide of her appreciation, as an inherently good thing. Why not? Then, when I wonder to myself if she just might possibly help in the way of a personally defined wish of self-interest, I do not mean my conclusion on that to stand for my valuation of her presence on the public stage. Because, again, it is good that she does what she does for others.

Note: Mr. Lapsus Linguae here after having fudged the spelling of the name, was late to spot the oversight.

Susan and Andrew (above),

Well, I don't disagree with anything either of you say. I certainly don't think she's worthless. As I said in my post I'm sure people find her poems genuinely inspirational and they give people what they need. People find those 'inspirational' Facebook quotes inspirational too, presumably, or they wouldn't post them. People find Taylor Swift inspirational. I genuinely have no problem with that. But her poetry just isn't very good, and no amount of worrying whether her audience are being patronised by highbrow critics will change that. I find the idea that her poetry shouldn't be criticised because this is the kind of poetry that 'ordinary' people can understand and relate to slightly patronising itself. There are many steps on the ladder of poetic 'accessibility' between Kaur and 'highbrow' poetry and many of them are much better. But to go back to what Andrew S asked in the original post:

I think it's a bit of a false dichotomy. The answer to all three is 'no'.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/har...0/on-rupi-kaur

I don't know if "cowardly" is the right word, but Orwn has pointed out something interesting: Rupi Kaur's rise has been rapid and totally outside of poetry's usual "channels." Ocean Vuong's has also been rapid and has happened totally within the usual channels; he has recently been appointed a member of the MFA faculty at UMass-Amherst.

I am less interested in Rupi Kaur's poetry than in the boy Orwn met recently. How's it going with him, Orwn? Do I hear wedding bells?

Yes, reading the essay Sam links to, it seems fairly similar in tone to our discussion in this thread. I've still not seen any Rupi Kaur; for my part, I'm more interested in Ocean Vuong, who seems to be judging more than one poetry competition these days. I've now read a little of Vuong's work and am not yet inspired.

Cheers,
John

Update: I just came across Vuong's "Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong", which I like a good deal. So there's that.

Update II: Frank O'Hara's "Katy": "Some day I’ll love Frank O’Hara." Well, that was my favorite bit of the Vuong poem.

Hey Mark. I hear what your saying. Where her work stands on the poetry scale doesn't interest me so I wasn't commenting on that. I don't get much out of quite a lot of poetry that other people great value in so I figure to each their own and focus on what I do find powerful and try to underline that. Unless there are ideas in the poetry that I think are rotten. I wasn't *worried* about her audience being patronized. I just think the idea that the supposed caliber of her art indicates something ingenuous or fleeting in what she seems to be part of triggering in some folks suspect. I definitely wasn't responding to mostly respectful and reasoned comments in this thread here, just to be clear. I missed Walter's post which was a good one.

More importantly, is it really her style or form that makes her work unsuitable for learning from? I think if you had ten thousand students honesty try to write in what they take as her style and her form you would find quite a bit of poetry in the results. It would be based on the images, lexicon, and energy that the various individuals accessed while playing in her shoes. Neither the form or the style would have changed in any easily articulated way. I think what people are objecting to, in most of the comments outside here, are what images she finds moving, especially how common some of these images are. Like these critics, I lose the ability to be moved by too familiar of an array of image and word. Does that mean I am more sensitive to what is powerful in our Under or less so? Am I arguing for exalting the cliche? Nope. Just admitting that something is interesting in the whole picture to me and that I don't quite know what it means.

Surely the only thing that should matter is 'are the poems any good? Is it good art?' Nobody on the thread has actually tried to engage with them, for very good reason. They're really poor. I urge anybody who hasn't already to read the actual poems I linked to. Any other discussion is just sociological babble. I'm reminded of a Bill Hicks stand-up routine from 1990 on another piece of zeitgeisty pop-culture:

'You know I saw this movie this year called er, 'Basic Instinct'. Okay now. Bill's quick capsule review: Piece-of-Shit. Okay now. Yeah, yeah, end of story by the way. Don't get caught up in that fevered hype phoney fucking debate about that Piece-of-Shit movie. "Is it too sexist, is it ironic, and what about the movies, are they becoming too dddddddd." You're, you're just confused, you don't get, you've forgotten how to judge correctly. Take a deep breath, look at it again. "Oh it's a Piece-of-Shit!" Exactly, that's all it is. "But Bill, is it too, what about the lesbian connot.. ddddd." You're, you're getting really baffled here. Piece-of-Shit! Now walk away. That's all it is, it's nothing more! Free yourself folks, if you see it, Piece-of-Shit, say it and walk away. You're right! You're right! Not those fuckers who want to tell you how to think! You're fucking right!!'

That is an incisive review.

John

Why?

If interest in the experience young folks seem to have with her words and their form is just the sociological babble part of who/what she/her work than you already have all the answers. I have a young daughter who reads Rilke and Kaur and finds poetry in both. She makes me laugh much than Bill Hicks and has a better grasp of the human condition than he had on his best day. But I am partial, and think cynics are bores.

I found some sections of her stuff I liked. I like her better than T.S. Elliot.

As I said, I do not like her poetry. I also find her persona to be manufactured by the worst the internet has to offer: droves of easy listeners who want to feel good fast.

Some do derive meaning from her words but I wonder about those people...

Just seeing Andrew M.'s thoughts... You can't be serious! This is not good poetry. If subjectivity is your only excuse for calling all art good just because it's art, then there is no such thing as art. Still, I give you a tiny sliver of recognition, Andrew, because, as Rupi might say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Am I serious about liking her better than Elliot or about my daughter being cooler than Bill Hicks?

With such an important thread as this one, with so much on the line regarding our own work and lives, we should be precise.



What Julie's first post said.

I'm glad this has generated discussion.

I'm of Mark's mind here that her poetry isn't good. I take that for granted: Julie's point about how she enjoyed it more than other poetry best-sellers doesn't contradict it, only to show how bad many of the best-selling poetry books often are. Actually, much like Walter's point, she doesn't bother me: she's earnest, intelligent, and getting to live a life I'd be lying if I wasn't a bit jealous of. (Writing and reading poetry all day? Sign me up.) She's earned it.

For me, these bits are besides the point (though I almost spit my coffee out when Andrew M. said he liked her more than Eliot). I'm wondering if there's some lesson we can glean from her work. Is what makes her work popular necessarily that it's mediocre and cliché? Or is it that there's an element of therapy to it for her readers--it's self help, of sorts. I've been thinking a lot recently about art as something "useful," and my distaste for poetry that isn't an end in itself, like people should be. I'm thinking popular poetry inevitably has to be a means to some other end.*

Also, I think the comparison to Voung and others is instructive, and that's another part of the question, I think. How do those of us outside the traditional academic power structure (no MFA or university job) find an audience?

(*Certainly I'm aware that great poetry has been made with the express goal of making money--this is probably a different conversation.)

Andrew,

I really like you. But so many non sequiturs.

'Why?'

Why is the actual quality of the poems written by somebody who has sold hundreds of thousands of books an important discussion point? For people on a poetry workshop site it seems like a pretty good question to me.

'If interest in the experience young folks seem to have with her words and their form is just the sociological babble part of who/what she/her work than you already have all the answers.'

This sentence makes no sense.

'I have a young daughter who reads Rilke and Kaur and finds poetry in both.'

Good for her. So what?

'She makes me laugh much than Bill Hicks and has a better grasp of the human condition than he had on his best day.'

Again, so what? What point are you making? Obviously our family members make us laugh in ways that writers and comedians can't. I'm not setting Bill Hicks up as a great sage. I'm not even a huge fan. I just remembered the routine and thought it was funny and apposite to this topic.

'But I am partial, and think cynics are bores.'

Andrew S started this thread, presumably with the intention of gleaning some opinions on Rupi Kaur. My honest opinion is that her poetry isn't very good. At all. She seems very nice and sincere and non-affected and unpretentious as a person. I don't mind or begrudge her popularity one iota. Bad art is popular. 'Fifty Shades of Grey' is a best-seller. 'Transformers' movies are box-office hits. I don't understand your definition of 'cynic' here. I'm far from cynical.

'I like her better than T.S. Elliot.'

I assume you're joking. If not, good luck with that.

Edit: cross-posted with about three people ha!

Andrew, I'll take you at your word about your daughter and Bill Hicks. But I was referring to Eliot. However, I defer to you on that as well. Just so long as you don't consider her as having the poetic abilities of Eliot. And that is the real point you're making, I suppose.

My point is that Rupi will have her 15 minutes of fame and it won't be because she is a poet. She is an internet sensation.
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Garbage word salad effaced.

Mark, I feel that most of the people on this thread are talking at cross purposes. In poetry (as in most things) there is the issue of popularity and the issue of excellence and lasting value. Those two fields have a small area of overlap (someone like Byron, for example, was a huge best seller and is still read and valued today--though, interestingly, not as much as Keats, who was not a hit right from the start). I think that Kaur is popular for good reasons (which others have already touched on) but that her popularity is of the moment because the underlying artistry isn't there. The earlier comparison to Rod McKuen is instructive.

There are many people who say that they like poetry (many young people, for example) but don't actually read any. They like the kind of poetry they find in popular songs, and that level of poetry is what can reach them. When another young person comes along who puts their feelings into a form that can reach them, they all rush out and buy the book. It doesn't mean they will ever buy another book of poetry, but I don't begrudge them their enthusiasm or begrudge Kaur her popularity. They are getting pleasure from it; she is providing it. It's not heroin; it won't wreck their lives. It is not spoiling their ability to appreciate the best poetry, because for many of them, that ability is not there. Those who do like complex poetry, as well, will find it, given time.

Susan

Erik: All of the above are speculations.

More like grasping at straws (As Rupi would say)

I'm two hours post-coffee. Typically I'm very forgiving when it comes to individual preferences for good poetry, knowing that there are so many brilliant poets toiling away in obscurity. But being popular and being good at that which has made you popular are two different things. That she fills a void with such pedestrian sentiment is more a hallmark of Hallmark than it is of poetry. That's my point. Her fans will likely never find their way from reading Rupi to reading the classics because one is candy and the other bouillabaisse. One is kool-aid the other is coffee.
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cross-posted with Susan who said what I said but better.

You didn't say the quality of her poems was an important part of this. You said that it was the only part of this. I disagreed strongly. In fact, Andrew's original question is exactly not about the quality of her work but the meaning and worth of her reception and how that might provoke good poems from her followers. You think you know that it can't. You used Bill Hicks to say the sum of her work was total shit. I think the subtext here is about the people who find poetry in her work and wouldn't linger for a second of yours or mine. I like what I see of her work reflecting on her listeners. I have few opinions about her as a poet aside from liking her better than Elliot. I am just fine with my sense of art. It works well for me but thanks for the luck, in any case. I think you are blind to the hubris of your Hick's post and what it suggested about those who disagree with you.

As for "so what business"... I hear you saying not everything I say here meets your criteria for relevant. Oh no. Maybe you don't like me. This is me too. If we talking particle physics and you posted an opinion by Einstein I would know why. Here we are speaking of a poet that seems to be provoking a meaningful response in some subset of younger women readers. I could ask me daughter to verify her credentials. I think her response would get be banned. No worries on me taking this personal. I honestly don't care at all if everyone in the world disagrees with me on something like this. I promise. I do think threads here on living "sellers" almost always fill up with posts about how they suck by folks who would seem to as yet have done any better. That is not a shot at you. Really. It is just a part of the dynamic here that I prefer to counter.

The first article I saw on Kaur was a understated slashing by The Cut. It seemed designed to exhibit her as shallow fool without being able to be pinned on it. Maybe she is that. I dunno. I do think it is more telling that so many seem to actually root for that to turn out to be so. Because she has succeeded, to them, I guess. I honestly don't care. I found her work curious long before I had any idea that she was famous. Not in spite of but because its pieces aren't original, at all, and many of her readers know it. She is quoting some index that they already found familiar. Walter thinks it will just pass out of memory. He may be right. Or maybe these readers will begin some new subset, adding their own images and relations of words to the index with the same forms and placements and something cool will come of it.

And she kicks Elliot's ass. No waffle.

Well, I am certainly pre-coffee myself.
But I agree. I said 'poetry' to refer to the work but if you called it a hallmark trifle and not poetry, I would not disagree. I mean I referred to it by 'poetry' because of it being called that in so many articles. But I suppose you are right, I ought to not call it that even.


P.S. Who is ‘Eric’?

Good point about her underlying artistry, but I think you miss the most interesting part. The worth of her poetry, in relation to the original post about learning from it, wouldn't be in her sustained popularity or whether she is adding potential consumers of other poetry but whether she might trigger more poets. She is writing clear and simple stuff, showing them that it can matter to thousands, and it is all happening on a electronic note pad that those involved can immediately go to work on and instantly publish. Usually new schools of poetry are started by the best of that school and they slowly degrade. It is a wide net. Plenty of junk will get dragged in but it is a wide net.

Question: is poetry likely to be more successful if it's bad?
I think that quite a bit of poetry that readers here will value does things that will put great masses of readers off. Them's the breaks. Imposing abstract pattern on speech is not something most people do in a typical day, and poetry that's not unrhymed free verse does it routinely.
That's all pretty obvious. But to my mind, those obvious statements have the corollary that speech without a lot of abstract pattern will almost inevitably be more accessible to the average punter. A fair bit of "bad" poetry - I think we can say this - is closer to everyday speech than is typical in MFA programs, and thus won't put great masses of readers off at the outset.
I once asked a poet how she balanced speech rhythms with poetic baggage, and she said "I have no poetic baggage."

Cheers,
John

Did I mention I like her better than Elliot?

Well he is in San Francisco and I am in New York and my idea of a wedding is city hall with five people in attendance, while his would be a giant Persian wedding with everyone involved. Alas.

Erik, sorry. Fixed it.

Andrew, yes you did mention you liked her better than Eliot. Are you sure?