The thing with Gill's "homeless man's Mary Oliver" act is that it really is nothing more than a resonant tone of voice; Sort of sensual and imagistic in this vague way, declamatory and self-helpy. It feels flattering to be spoken of like the heroine of a romance novel, but there isn't much of anything underneath the style, which really shows through in the limited selection of imagery she deploys.
Great article. Really liked the jazz point; shall certainly be borrowing that quote for my own discussions.
If we want more people to read good poetry, as I desperately do, it's probably in our best interest to try and use these Instagram poems as bridges. Someone who is a fan of Instagram poetry could conceivably become a fan of actual poetry with a bit of encouragement.
For example, though the monotony and shallowness of the fire imagery used is pretty evident, someone with at least an ember (sorry!) of interest in how the poet has used it in a metaphorical way could possibly be persuaded to read Frost's Fire and Ice, a much better reflection on these same ideas (by considerable orders of magnitude!), if it was framed in the right way.
That being said, having a good chuckle at how bad and repetitious these poems are doesn't hurt either.
I gave a lecture on poetry a few years ago to a class of young students in a literature class and did use as one of my examples a Rupi Kaur poem to sort of illustrate through its limits what poetry CAN do, and how Kaur fails to achieve it.
sometimes its nice to indulge in some quality haterade
The same could be said for many singer/songwriters.
The thing with Gill's "homeless man's Mary Oliver" act is that it really is nothing more than a resonant tone of voice; Sort of sensual and imagistic in this vague way, declamatory and self-helpy. It feels flattering to be spoken of like the heroine of a romance novel, but there isn't much of anything underneath the style, which really shows through in the limited selection of imagery she deploys.
I think "flattery" is a big part of the appeal for most of these guys, hence why the men who do it come off like such "player boy" dorks.
[LL Cool J lip-licking face intensifies]
rh Sin's next poem: sliding into some random girl's DMs to tell her she's beautiful
The Gill examples are redolent of ChatGPT
but years older!
predolent
A lot of the Instagram poetry is so cringe to read 😭
people don’t have any respect for linguistics and phonetics anymore, and it shows ):
Great article. Really liked the jazz point; shall certainly be borrowing that quote for my own discussions.
If we want more people to read good poetry, as I desperately do, it's probably in our best interest to try and use these Instagram poems as bridges. Someone who is a fan of Instagram poetry could conceivably become a fan of actual poetry with a bit of encouragement.
For example, though the monotony and shallowness of the fire imagery used is pretty evident, someone with at least an ember (sorry!) of interest in how the poet has used it in a metaphorical way could possibly be persuaded to read Frost's Fire and Ice, a much better reflection on these same ideas (by considerable orders of magnitude!), if it was framed in the right way.
That being said, having a good chuckle at how bad and repetitious these poems are doesn't hurt either.
I gave a lecture on poetry a few years ago to a class of young students in a literature class and did use as one of my examples a Rupi Kaur poem to sort of illustrate through its limits what poetry CAN do, and how Kaur fails to achieve it.
Inspired me to write a poem on IG poetry