[Ann Drysdale]

In the light of recent posts, I feel obliged to post a caveat for those who have lately discovered Maz: While occasional recreational use can provide immediate gratification, prolonged exposure may seriously affect the heart.

In my own opinion, however, the benefits far outweigh the danger.

[Michael Cantor]

If this thread has introduced a few more people to Maz, it has accomplished far more for poetry than all the talk about Rupi Kaur.

[Aaron Poochigian]

Orwn, if you end up giving in and participating in a large Persian gay wedding in San Francisco, please do invite me--I would love to see such an event. It might make me love America again.

[Mark McDonnell]

Michael, it has! Well, me at least. Thanks to Julie, I spent a couple of hours last night trawling the Internet and old 'sphere threads in search of her. What a remarkable story and person and what a poet. It's a cliche to say you feel like you know someone without having met them, and of course I never even interacted with her 'virtually', but that feeling was there. I wish I really had.

There's an interesting link to be made with Rupi Kaur (about whom I've probably said enough) that nobody has picked up on. I said to Walter a few posts back that 'I would love to live in a world where (a poet) was a social media phenomenon and a genuinely good writer. Is that to much to ask?' to which he replied 'Mark, that is far too much to ask!' Now, his tongue was somewhat in his cheek I assume, but in researching Maz it struck me that she was a kind of pre-social media Internet phenomenon who similarly eschewed the normal channels of publishing: from her Wikipedia 'Rather than seek publication through traditional channels, she was content to share her work with fellow poets on various Internet forum.

What a difference in ten short years, from when the online world was a place for a hugely talented introvert to flourish and find slow but real recognition, to the extrovert self-publicising world of Instagram poetry with its 'marketing' and 'presence', where it's taken as a given that the quality of the actual poems is a small part of the overall package. But I'll stop before I sound simultaneously naive and grumpy. (Before?)

So yes, thanks for the introduction.

[Rick Mullin]

I once attended a huge Iraqi wedding on a boat in the Bosporus in Istanbul (2004). Bachelor party at a hammam, too. Huge percussion section, belly dancers, and weird ice cream. I sat next to a Spanish soap opera star on the party bus to the boat.

[Matt Q]

Here's an article from yesterday's Guardian, "Poetry world split over polemic attacking 'amateur' work by 'young female poets'", which is in reaction to a PN Review article by Rebecca Watts called "The cult of the noble amateur". Watts starts off with Kaur, but her main focus is Holly McNish, whose book she'd been asked to review, a request she refused as, "to do so for a poetry journal would imply that it deserves to be taken seriously as poetry". Kate Temple and Ocean Vuong also get a mention as do T.S. Eliot and Donald Trump. So, something for everyone I guess!

A couple of quotes from Watts' article:

WHY IS THE POETRY WORLD pretending that poetry is not an art form? I refer to the rise of a cohort of young female poets who are currently being lauded by the poetic establishment for their ‘honesty’ and ‘accessibility’ – buzzwords for the open denigration of intellectual engagement and rejection of craft that characterises their work.
[...]
McNish’s poems consist of assemblages of words that relate to familiar topics. Their effect is limited to recognition, which merely reinforces the reader or audience member’s sense of selfhood. As McNish and her critics acknowledge, her fans are drawn to the poems by the themes – sex, relationships and perceived social inequalities – as well as by McNish’s ‘unpretentious’ presentation, where unpretentious means abundant in expletives and unintimidating to anyone who considers ignorance a virtue

[Jim Moonan]

This from an article in the September 2016 BBC News:
Books are published by specialist presses with short print-runs or self-published. Poetry sections in bookshops appear to shrink by the month. There's a lot of poetry about but it seems few people want to buy it.
But social media shows us that a broader, more democratic appetite for poetry exists, after all.

The article includes the startling fact that Phillip Larkin was an internet sensation. Here it is:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37319526

Btw, Twitter has an unofficial poet laureate. His nome de plume is Brian Bilston. I’ve enjoyed his satiric wit and talent as a poet in the age of social media. How he came to be is a fascinating story.
To be blunt, Kaur's poetic expressions are candy. Bilston is a cup of coffee. I agree that her value is that she attracts people to poetry, but there have been and will be poet's of her ilk. Her work, in my opinion, is disposable.

Here is another article on the emergence of poetry on social media through the poetry of Brian Bilston:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-...ity-180959486/

[Mark McDonnell]

Thanks for the link Matt, I enjoyed the article. It's fun to follow this particular bunfight.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Brian Bilston has published a couple of things that are very clever, including a poem that can be read from the top down and the bottom up, with entirely different meanings.

[Matt Q]

Originally Posted by Mark McDonnell

Thanks for the link Matt, I enjoyed the article. It's fun to follow this particular bunfight.

Then most likely you'll enjoy this one too, "No Filter", by Soraya Robots. Interesting article focused predominantly on Kaur, but including other instagram "poets".

It is not inquiry, it is not sedition, it is not richness, it is not even really beauty. It is status quo. It is confirmation that everything you are thinking, everything you are feeling, everything you are doing, is fine, perfect even. Instapoetry is an outcrop of a space that radiates niceness, that has in fact been pruned of that which is not nice. “A cynic may note here that [changes to make Instagram a more supportive environment] are as good for business as they are for the soul,” Nicholas Thompson recently wrote in Wired. “Advertisers like spending money in places where people say happy, positive things, and celebrities like places where they are less likely to get mocked.” This place has thus become a haven for the young, pummeled not only by the digital world but the world itself. And Instapoets have become their bards, reinforcing their narcissism, offering a filtered reflection of an anxious generation scrambling for distraction. “For me, poetry is like holding up a mirror and seeing myself,” Rupi Kaur, the best-selling Instapoet of all time, has said. In other words, this is the poetry of capitalism.