I’m sure we’ve all been witness to a new, profound format of poetry that has pervaded social media. It’s concise, simple, and makes anyone believe that they can be a poet laureate. This poetry doesn’t necessarily have a label (instagrammable poetry?), but it’s better demonstrated in some specific narratives, such as the notable milk and honey by Rupi Kaur, or flux by Orion Carloto. These individual collections of poetry are typically written in all lowercase, with staccato lines, and a simple line illustration that accompanies the poetry.
You may have seen excerpts from these collections just scrolling through Insta, on your Tumblr feed, or teary-eyed tweets that praise the minimalist styled poetry; a simple “you have sadness/living in places/sadness shouldn’t live” from the words of Rupi Kaur, in addition to the immensely deep “stay/i whispered/as you/shut the door behind you.”
Okay, okay, there’s no harm in admiring poetry with subject matter that speaks to you, we all are entitled to the things we like, and that includes prose. However, I personally feel that this minimalistic poetry trend has regressed the standards of creativity in poetry. In many of these poems, we see little rhythm or lyricism, and many cliches strung together to create nothing more than a mediocre diary entry. I see it as nothing beyond filling a quarter of a page for an aesthetic. The upsurge of this contemporary format leads many influencers to further chase celebrity, and this path may include a little dive into poetry. Take Youtuber Gabbie Hanna’s Adultolescence, for example. One poem entitled “Advice 9” reads, “when I was a kid I thought I’d never be able to swallow/a pill & now I can swallow two pills at a time so ur/capable of more then you ever could imagine in ur/wildest dreams.”
Ummmmmm….you’re kidding, right?
It seems that this style of poetry is so easy to construct that these so-called poets have to make a laugh of it, so much so that this type of poetry has breeded parody novels that mock these basic, short texts. How can anyone forget the hilarious milk and vine book that erupted controversy a couple years back? It shouldn’t be forgotten that this prose was nothing more than stolen vine references organized in short lines, but everyone remembers how amusing it was that these parodies didn’t differ much in comparison to the real published compositions that inspired them.
In the midst of all of this heavy critique from people who share the same sentiments as I do about this new wave of minimalist poetry, some people claim that these books are so mainstream because they are accessible, and don’t require too much deliberation to find a piece of yourself in it, as expressed in this tweet by user @brookylnwrites_: brooklyn connolly on Twitter: “unpopular opinion: Rupi Kaur is popular because her writing is accessible – almost anyone can read her words and find a piece of themselves in it. disregarding her work for its ease is classist. just let people enjoy things even if you don’t share the enjoyment.…”
I don’t doubt that this point of view carries some weight, but it still doesn’t excuse how the easy construction of these poems is often used for cash-grabs and superficial posts, and disregards the multifaceted elements of poetry that can make individual prose sound so pioneering and remarkable in structure, the kind that can’t be copied by anyone else.
Novels Referenced:
milk and honey by Rupi Kaur
Adultolescence by Gabbie Hanna