[Julie Steiner]

Criticism of Rupi Kaur's poetry can never take place separately from her identity as a woman of color, because her identity is the fuel for her publicity machine.

If you are a white male poet who wants to say, with perfect justice, that Rupi Kaur's work is objectively substandard, the fact that those standards have been set and upheld for centuries by white male poets is sure to come up.

Even though you personally had nothing to do with that.

Unfair? Yes.

A lot of us would like to believe in a force of universal justice, which rewards excellent work for its own merits, and elevates deserving poets to fame and fortune. (Perhaps years after their deaths, as in the case of Emily Dickinson. But eventually.)

I don't believe in that force of universal justice.

I think that poets' fame and fortune are largely a function of the publicity-management side of "the po-biz." Poets (and their inner circles) who are good at working the system, or creating new systems, tend to get attention and opportunities. Poets like me, who aren't interested in putting in the time and work required to build contacts and visibility, can't complain when the Tiara Fairy doesn't arrive to crown our work purely for its own merits.

Emily Dickinson is hailed as a genius today because various people wanted, for their own reasons, to bring her work to public attention after her death. Some of these promoters, past and present, have not been at all shy about building her mystique by sensationalizing either the "reclusive, repressed poet" angle or the "irrepressible sexpot who might have been in an incestuous and/or lesbian relationship, or both" angle.

Sometimes that publicity overwhelms the work itself. As Kaur's Wikipedia article notes: "However, critical reviews of her literary works have been observedly negative. Some of the main reoccurring themes reviewers seem to cite problems with are Kaurs' apparent lack of poetic form and depth."

The more we either defend or criticize (what most of us here agree is) poor poetry on the part of Rupi Kaur, the more publicity we give both her and the "outsider rejected by the mean old dismissive Establishment" narrative that various people, including Kaur herself, want to use her career to illustrate.

Things will change when other female poets from Southeast Asia are brought to larger attention as an alternative to Kaur. India is a very big country, and is about half filled with women. There is a long tradition of female poets there. I'm hopeful.

But again, it takes someone to work the publicity side of things. Good work doesn't just bubble up to prominence on its own.

[Roger Slater]

"Criticism of Rupi Kaur's poetry can never take place separately from her identity as a woman of color, because her identity is the fuel for her publicity machine."

I don't understand what you're saying. Do you really think that we'd have a different opinion of her poetry if she were a white man?

[Mark McDonnell]

Here’s another Instagram poet called Atticus. He’s not not quite as big as Rupi but he’s pretty massive (he has 1.4 million followers to her 3.9).

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/atticus-poetry

His stuff is very similar and equally bad. Possibly worse, because it’s kind of creepy. He is white and male, and if he were as big as Rupi Kaur and this thread were about him I would be saying exactly the same things.

Here’s another Instagram poet called RH Sin. 1.9 million followers. Also male, but black. So, is that better or...?

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quo...080768.R_H_Sin

Again, very similar. This stuff is clearly a formula.

Criticism of Rupi Kaur's poetry can never take place separately from her identity as a woman of color, because her identity is the fuel for her publicity machine.

It can. I’m doing it.

I’m sorry Julie, I think you’re massively over-complicating this. There’s a phenomenon called Instagram poetry that is very formulaic, pretty bad, and is selling by the truckloads. As poets, people on this site are interested in that phenomenon and will engage in a little mockery. Race and gender have nothing to do with it. I don’t really think jealousy does either. More amused and rueful incredulity.

[Jim Moonan]

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Yes her poetry is decidedly on the other side of the poetic fence. It is consumer poetry for the masses and for the ones who prefer nips of inspiration, soundbites of free verse in a social media universe. Pop poetry. T-shirt stuff. Never the twain shall meet. I'd hate to be wrong about that, but that's how I feel.

I don't get a sense that anyone here is critical of her poetry and attribute what is lacking in it to the fact that she is a woman or a person of color. We all have blind spots when it comes to such things as gender, ethnicity, class, race, etc. but I think we here are all seeing Rupi clearly as a poet for those who don't read poetry. There may be a few that are gems, but the rest are candy.
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[Quincy Lehr]

The Baffler's article on Instapoetry is pretty definitive:

https://thebaffler.com/latest/instapoetry-roberts

[Mark McDonnell]

Quincy, yes. I remember reading that one the last time I got sucked into this. It’s a good take.

[Jim Moonan]

Yes. It is that bad. That reflective.

[Julie Steiner]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

"Criticism of Rupi Kaur's poetry can never take place separately from her identity as a woman of color, because her identity is the fuel for her publicity machine."

I don't understand what you're saying. Do you really think that we'd have a different opinion of her poetry if she were a white man?

No, I'm saying that because most of her poems are about a woman of color's experience of rejection and being discarded as unworthy, even perfectly valid technical criticism reinforces what her poems say about a woman of color's experience of rejection and being discarded as unworthy.

And it's a lot like the Catch-22 of criticizing Trump. No matter how valid one's objections are, his base takes them as further evidence that there really is a hostile elite that is out to get him. You can't win that sort of argument.

Consider Rupi Kaur's response to censorship of her menstrual blood photo:

thank you @instagram for providing me with the exact response my work was created to critique

As with Trump, I think the best response is not to critique, but to promote a better alternative.

If only that were easier....

[Roger Slater]

“i was orange juice but you/had just brushed your teeth – rupi kaur.”

[A parody poem quoted in that article]

[Michael Cantor]

Rupi Kaur is a silly, juvenile poet, and her sex has absolutely nothing to do with it. As Jim said, she's a poet for people who don't read poetry. You 're right on almost all things, Julie, but it this case you're painfully, painfully wrong. (And I think this is the first time I've used "silly' or "juvenile" to refer to a female poet - but there are a couple of white male poets on the Sphere where I've used it more than once.)