This poet is trolling everyone on Instagram to show how social media glorifies pop poetry

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William Haskins

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When Texas-based poet Thom Young joined Instagram around 2009, he noticed a number of poets were already using the platform to share their work. At first, he found this encouraging and began sharing his work there as well, amassing several thousand followers. But as he continued to look around, he also noticed something strange: While most serious, award-winning poets — those who did thoughtful work — got hardly any attention, people who wrote short, trite poetry got tons of likes and followers. Some of these “pop poets,” as he calls them, had become social media celebrities overnight.

And so Young, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, decided to do an experiment. He thought he’d try writing the most vapid, simplistic poetry he could and post it to Instagram to see what happened.

“I decided that a parody or satire was needed to demonstrate how easy it was to get popular on social media, particularly on Instagram, writing this short, trite poetry,” he said. “And right away I started getting followers and likes like crazy” — going from 9,000 to 46,000 followers on Instagram in less than a year, he said.

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To those who might say the experiment is condescending, Young says that’s not his goal. He does not want to criticize those who write or like pop poetry, he said, but instead hopes it leads younger people to think more about what they read (in addition to being a poet, Young is also a high school English teacher).


http://www.pbs.org/newshour/poetry/...gram-show-social-media-glorifies-pop-poetry/#
 

Ari Meermans

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To those who might say the experiment is condescending, Young says that’s not his goal. He does not want to criticize those who write or like pop poetry, he said, but instead hopes it leads younger people to think more about what they read (in addition to being a poet, Young is also a high school English teacher).

I guess I'm just thick—if he's not intending to be condescending or critical, then what does "[he] hopes it leads younger people to think more about what they read" mean?

Individual tastes vary in poetry just as they do in prose. And society's tastes change from one generation to the next. I'm happy to see aspiring poets willing to put their work out there. just sayin'
 

William Haskins

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i've been on a mission to support online poets (through the #shareapoem hashtag and elsewhere) and i will admit it's mystifying sometimes what gets attention and what doesn't.

thom young would be better served (as would young poets and readers) by contributing to making a distinction between quality verse and crap instead of dangling crap out there as bait for readers who don't know better.
 

Ari Meermans

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i've been on a mission to support online poets (through the #shareapoem hashtag and elsewhere) and i will admit it's mystifying sometimes what gets attention and what doesn't.

thom young would be better served (as would young poets and readers) by contributing to making a distinction between quality verse and crap instead of dangling crap out there as bait for readers who don't know better.

Exactly. And his putting crap out there as bait did not serve his stated intention.

It is mystifying to me too. I'll admit, tho', I'm pretty old-school and a definite hardliner when it comes to my preference for poetry that makes me think and ponder; iow, I crave depth and nuance.
 
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William Haskins

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interesting that the writer has changed the title from what is in this thread's subject line to the muted:
[h=1]Why this poet is posting meaningless verse on Instagram[/h]
 

frimble3

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And, what does Instagram prove about poets or readers? Isn't this the same site where people post pictures of the meals they're eating? Not food they've made, but stuff they've just bought in a restaurant? I wouldn't think that people go there for fine art of great literature.
 
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AW Admin

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And, what does Instagram prove about poets or readers? Isn't this the same site where people post pictures of the meals they're eating? Not food they've made, but stuff they've just bought in a restaurant? I wouldn't think that people go there for fine art of great literature.

There's been some pretty good poetry posted, and poets go where they'll be heard.

The age demographic on Instagram skews under 25.

Wrt to "fine art or great literature" pretty sure the original audience for Beowulf woke up with hangovers.

My three favorite all time poems were recorded on parchment scraps and margins, and exist only in single ms. copies.
 
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Anna Iguana

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Ari, I agree that every generation's different, as are their tastes. I'm persuaded that people are reading/writing much more because of social media. From there, I'm slow to blame social media for adverse effects on reading/writing.
 
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I come away with the idea that he doesn't understand what his "trite" poems are doing.

They're like haiku. They say little, but are evocative, so people put their own emotions into them. What does "Love made her wild" mean? Is it a good thing, or bad? Was it her loving something, or someone loving her? What does wild mean in this context? I could reflect on that one sentence for a long while, like looking at a crystal and seeing different things in different lights.

On the other hand, his "real" work "Gills" held no interest for me at all.
 

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I think that this young poet should grow up. Any text is a collaboration between the writer and the reader, and that includes poetry. The reader will make of a poem what they will.

I think my favourite comparison is “Stop all the clocks” by W.H.Auden. Many, many people love that poem, and feel that poem. I guess the film “Four weddings and a funeral” brought it into public attention, and people took it and ran with it. I’ve heard the poem at two funerals, and one of my friends admits to choking up at the words.

However, the poem is included in a play called “The Ascent of A6” from 1936 that he co-wrote with Cristopher Isherwood. It is meant to be an over-the-top lament for a departed politician. It’s a sarcastic and cynical poem, meant to make you roll your eyes about the whole funeral because in that context, the dead politician is anything but loved and respected.

Yet that’s not what has happened. People take it seriously. People take the words, and mean them sincerely. People make the poem work for them, without that black-humour context, because in a collaboration of reader and writer, the reader went “screw this, I like this, and I’ll use these words in this way instead”.
 
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RightHoJeeves

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Ugh, he sounds like a guy I know. Late 20s, English teacher. He would always complain about the "system" not letting him probably teach the students. He also took at least one sick day a week. His contract wasn't renewed after his second year, so he decided he knew better than everyone else and started up "education consultancy" with the goal of reforming the entire education system.

One time he read us a short story that featured him as the main character, sitting in LAX with his acoustic guitar. He/the character was doing a quite stateside tour during the school holidays, and was wistfully thinking of the kids at the (lower socio-economic) school he taught at. I believe the last line was something like "He sighed. The real tragedy was that no matter how hard he tried, he would never reach them all."

He was very, very easy to make fun of.
 

Tazlima

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Ugh, he sounds like a guy I know. Late 20s, English teacher. He would always complain about the "system" not letting him probably teach the students. He also took at least one sick day a week. His contract wasn't renewed after his second year, so he decided he knew better than everyone else and started up "education consultancy" with the goal of reforming the entire education system.

One time he read us a short story that featured him as the main character, sitting in LAX with his acoustic guitar. He/the character was doing a quite stateside tour during the school holidays, and was wistfully thinking of the kids at the (lower socio-economic) school he taught at. I believe the last line was something like "He sighed. The real tragedy was that no matter how hard he tried, he would never reach them all."

He was very, very easy to make fun of.

Lol, I had a teacher like that. One of the classes I took with him was "Poetry of the 20th century" (this was in 2001). He devoted a solid 2/3 of the course analyzing his own, unpublished poetry. This, of course, drastically reduced the time we had to study Frost or Elliot or Dickenson... but it's OK, because we got to bask in the radience of his genius.

Sadly, he had tenure and was head of the English department, so I had to take a LOT of classes from this arrogant doofus. On the bright side, the other teachers in the department were downright spectacular and taught a ton.
 
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RightHoJeeves

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Lol, I had a teacher like that. One of the classes I took with him was "Poetry of the 20th century" (this was in 2001). He devoted a solid 2/3 of the course analyzing his own, unpublished poetry. This, of course, drastically reduced the time we had to study Frost or Elliot or Dickenson... but it's OK, because we got to bask in the radience of his genius.

Sadly, he had tenure and was head of the English department, so I had to take a LOT of classes from this arrogant doofus. On the bright side, the other teachers in the department were downright spectacular and taught a ton.

There is value in being around people that like. I remember very clearly, at the age of 22, being utterly bewildered with the conduct of my head of department, who was at least 40 years older than me. She constantly made idiotic decisions, and seemed utterly oblivious to the fact that everyone was miserable and hated her. She had been doing the job for like 25 years, so how could she be so incompetent.

She taught me that just because someone is older than you, and with more experience, doesn't mean they're not a total idiot. Valuable lesson to learn. I should send her a letter and say thanks.
 

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Instagram and Twitter and Facebook have a kind of instant appeal to us because you can pop in there and click Like or post a silly emoji or retweet a cute kitten being cute and then go back to earning a living or reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Social media is filled with mindless pleasures and opportunities for light relief. The more challenging posts don't tend to do well in this medium. And popularity signifies very little about quality or worth.

Serious skilful poetry is hard work. It is difficult to read and harder to write. On my Twitter feeds I have many poets and poetry-lovers and I pause, read a few lines, read them again, go away and think about them, come back and read the lines again. It doesn't surprise me in the least that most readers would only Like or comment on the simple obvious stuff.

On the other hand, I'm thrilled to hear there are poets and snippets of poetry lurking about on Instagram -- I use it as eye-candy only and shall now rush over there and find some tricky, slippery elusive poets. Many thanks, William.
 
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