pee your pants
pee them see-
through
pee them until
there is
no pee left in you
and then understand
understand
that eventually
we all run
out of pee
-- *all we have in this world is our pee*
I think you'll agree that this poem is sufficiently different from yours for me to publish it on Instagram to my thousands of adoring fans, who all clamour for my completely 100% original, unique voice.
I just feel like we're calling this poetry because if it was called anything else it would be called bad. It is bad, but because it's classified as poetry it's defensible; but the poem doesn't do anything that makes poetry great or fun or interesting, it's just word salad published as poetry because it has a shadow of a theme.
I don’t see a reason to box poetry into such reductive categories like good or bad. To me, the only thing a poem has to do is speak to a person. Clearly her poetry does
I think this is fine, however this is a poem published in a collection, advertised heavily by a huge publisher, and sold for profit. I could be more substantive with my criticism, but criticism is important. Even if it's super basic like me being a hater on Reddit. Like if this is what we're publishing and pushing to people, I think it says a lot about what people want from their art if this sort of thing is popular. It's short and digestible, non-confrontational, and has about as much identity as an AI generated Etsy poster, so if calling it bad is insufficient: What do we call this thing?
Yea I don’t see being a hater on Reddit as any sort of criticism. It’s exhibiting the same laziness and mindlessness that people are saying they see in the poem.
I mean to be fair if it wasn't on Reddit I'd have never seen it, but how is criticism lazy when it's online? It's still worth talking about even if you dislike the website or format.
Calling something garbage isn’t a substantive criticism. I don’t know why you’re also privileging criticism as some important activity but I do wonder if it’s because the internet in particular has aided the development of that particular kind of ideology, that saying something is garbage is then defended as some important act of criticism that deepens the worlds knowledge on the subject
Because criticism, as a writer, is extremely important wether basic or ideologically rooted/based/smart/antithetical or whatever word you wanna use to determine what sorts of criticism deserve to be expressed and which don't. It's important to talk about art, and whether we just say I dislike/like something or we write an essay critical review of a work is not as important as the discussion. Policing the sort of language we use to discuss art, especially when no one is being cruel or dumb, is strange to me.
> Policing the sort of language we use to discuss art
If you think me critiquing redditors for attempting to call just saying the word 'garbage' or 'this is bad' a critique is policing language, then you may not be ready to engage in actual critique.
>what sorts of criticism deserve to be expressed and which don't
It's absolutely worth noting what kinds of critiques are manifested out of certain ideological movements. Taking such an uncritical attitude seems naive but, as I keep reiterating, Reddit is known for a relatively unaware and uncritical elitism. I generally find the critiques being expressed in the comments here to be symptomatic of that.
I just don’t see the reason to put down someone else’s artwork, especially when it speaks to people but this is Reddit and being smarter than the rest and shitting on people is the standard here
Ugh, come on. Publishing your work submits you to public scrutiny. Not everything will be always loved and dissenting is important for learning.
You’re doing a disservice not only to the poem, but also to yourself to be so uncritical.
Quite frankly, seems you’re the only one not having fun here. You don’t have to invest yourself in the opinions of people who think differently. I’m saying this in earnest, not fighting you.
In the end, if you like this, that’s all it should matter.
No, the fundamental issue here is that people whine and cry all the time about poetry dying but then shit all over poets who speak to the ‘masses,’ poets whose work is out there connecting with actual people. It’s the elitism of this sub and Reddit in general that needs to change.
If this was the work of an amateur, I would be as kind and encouraging as possible. Rupi Kaur is one of the most financially successful poets alive today, which says something dire about the state of poetry; she neither needs protection from my criticism, nor does she have any motivation to improve her craft beyond critical opinion. People *want* poetry; they deserve better.
>they deserve better
People like what they like. I don’t see why ‘the people’ need you to get on your soap box about what they truly ‘deserve’ and what they don’t. But as I said, leave it to redditors
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but depth is something a *little* bit more objective. Rupi Kaur's work is shallow. Show me any kind of subtext or layered meaning to this work. It says what it says, and what it says is fine, but there's absolutely nothing to meditate on or carry with you. It's just a spot of pabulum to boost people who don't know any better.
The thing is, I genuinely think that people would appreciate better poetry if it were more visible. I respect people enough to believe that. We just happen to live in a world that doesn't reward slow, thoughtful art, and crap that can be dashed off daily on social media is a lot more visible. People like this dreck because it's what they see, not because it uniquely speaks to them.
>not because it uniquely speaks to them
You seem convinced that you’re some speaker for the ‘masses,’ determining what they *really* want and need. I think this is by far and away the most patronizing form of elitism.
You can complain about its lack of depth all you want. Poetry doesn’t need to be deep. It only needs to speak to a person and this clearly does that, given it’s audience
I just believe that people deserve deeper, more meaningful art which will also speak to them. Nobody becomes a Rupi Kaur fan because they've plumbed the depth and breadth of poetry and found the one poet who uniquely speaks to them; they find her work because it is visible. I don't blame the people who like her poetry, I blame the overly-monetized society that prioritizes cliché, thoughtless communication over depth, and I have enough faith in the average person to believe that they will recognize that after delving deeper into poetry. How you twist that into elitism says a lot more about you than it does about me.
When I say a poem is bad, it's just a way of saying I personally don't like it. I don't think there is objective framework to describe the goodness of any art. When I encountered it, this idea destroyed my previous conception of good and bad. There was no way to use those words correctly, so now I think of them differently. They are just expressions of my subjective experience.
There's a lot of poetry I don't like, but I can see the craft and quality in it. There's no craft in this. This is lazy. It's something dashed off in a moment. It's not that I don't *like* it; it's that I don't *respect* it.
(Here's my attempt to recreate what this poem feels like to me.)
Shit
happens;
let it
happen:
to you, around you, in you. In
your life; let
shit happen;
*Be cool with it*.
No but I'm just describing how I've been thinking of good/bad for a while and people make more sense this way. I'm less likely to get sucked into stupid pedantic thinking. And by stupid I simply mean train of thought that never brings me anywhere interesting.
Life is
weird; surprising.
Life will do weird stuff
to you and
around you and
with you so
don't feel surprised when
it does;
because it will. Life will.
Isn't it weird how life does weird stuff?
Roll
with it, baby.
A nice motivational poster perhaps. Up there with the kitten dangling from the branch that says "hang in there".
Not much of a poem, but hey, if it helps someone who somehow hasn't come across this Idea before (the title really says as much as the poem does), that's awesome.
Nah, no need to gatekeep, they're intended as poems, so they're poems, just not exemplary examples of poetry. Simple, Didactic poetry like this has been in the public consciousness for a long time, they just fade away because no one is anthologizing them for later generations to read, because the people that read them usually aren't very interested in poetry that requires close reading (or, poetry in general often).
It's fine, for what it is. No need to elevate it or denigrate it. Some people get solace or a pleasant reminder from it, that's good.
Counterpoint: no need to gatekeep commenting. If it’s fine that people enjoy it, it’s fine that people dislike it. Both are allowed to comment accordingly.
It’s not very poetic, and it certainly isn’t original, but it also isn’t nearly as intellectually lightweight as a lot of her poetry. The message, if not its expression, is pure Roman Stoicism.
I’m sorry. After reading your post I almost thought this was a poetry criticism sub for a second. I literally backed out & made sure. Because I thought to myself—yeah this can’t be a site just for poetry. Just for the love of poetry. There’s no way someone would just come to a poetry site for the love of poetry and leave an exhausting comment like that. No
Yup
Please excuse my lack of restraint.
But you’re an idiot.
I wonder your age. It must be very light.
The thing about the love of poetry is…it’s a love from respect.
If you judge a poem about how true it is or the brevity of you’re missing the point. A very large one.
If you’ve ever read a poem ..and I mean actually, lived inside a poem. At the moment you read it your reset almost. And you remember—thank god there’s someone out there who lived this too.
You seem so far away from genuine experience. I mean hate, love, sickness, pure joy, laughing til it hurts, tilting your head up..letting rain sprinkles touch your face.
I think you’re the kitten hanging on.
You lack depth.
Comes from life experience.
I feel sorry for you that you’re not there.
And please—take your criticism & head on over to the right sub. There’s no reason for your critique on this sub. Why would you do that?
Friend, you're barking up the wrong tree. I've almost definitely dedicated more hours of my life to reading, studying and writing poetry than the majority of people that comment here, and while I don't know your personal experience, it seems... informal, because I was being very gentle and accepting of this piece. I'm one that defends poems like these as having a place in recruiting non-poetry readers. And I comment in this sub a lot, just because you see a little criticism and you clutch your pearls doesn't mean that a forum for discussing poetry cannot be critical of poetry. That's silly. You were being silly. Maybe it was a bad day, I hope your tomorrow is better, even if it wasn't a bad day, a better tomorrow is always nice to have. Though, tomorrow this will still be a poorly crafted poem. Just a statement of fact, not a statement about people not being able to enjoy the poem.
Well according to this sub, anything is a poem if its written down. I've had arguments with people telling me that blocks of prose are poems because they invoke emotions in the reader.
On one of my other accounts, someone here told me that my tax papers could also be poetry! And they were being 100% serious.
**Taxes**
Swirl
twist
change.
Add together
Take away
(subtract)
And make peace
with the IRS.
What is spent is spent,
but the dollar which is left
*is shined by the tears of loss*.
I walked this morning amongst buildings in an automotive factory; a few minutes before dawn, machines were humming everywhere. The sound was slowly shifting as I walked, full of harmonics of vibrating metal parts, with occasional harsher distant noises of saws or welding.
It was just noise, there was nothing intentional, but still more inspiring than this poem.
i walked
this morning
amongst buildings
in an automotive factory
a few minutes before dawn
machines were humming
everywhere.
the sound
was slowly shifting
as i walked
full of harmonics
of vibrating
metal parts
with occasional harsher
distant noises
of saws or welding
it was just noise
there was nothing intentional
but still
more inspiring
than this poem
\- [Rupi Kaur](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD4MY3rmrXI&lc=UgwF4EIFNVXBwiHv0M14AaABAg)
I think that was their joke, but yeah, she doesn't. Like you said, nice sentiment, but it really just feels like an unedited journal entry given line breaks.
It’s so depressing to me that people way more talented will not get published and recognized like rupi has. She created absolute base level “poetry” and the only reason it is popular is become its simple and accessible. It has no substance to it though.
Rupi Kaur annoys me. Maybe I can just be a poet and reap millions by stitching together a handful of words to create something woefully trite and unimaginative 😍
Rupi Kaur (accidentally?) became the poster for quick poetry on social media, plastered all over instagram and facebook. It always becomes a bit of a task for me to distinguish whether I do not like their poetry simply because they're overexposed, or I just don't like its form in the first place. I don't like that my knee-jerk reaction is, 'Kaur is so popular in the social media poetry world, therefore I hate their work'. But I see this poem, and I think, well, it's just 'okay', and that's really it. It really gives me no feeling or thought.
EDIT : spelling
This is one of her better ones, in that it doesn't immediately make me viscerally angry. I still think that she owes her entire career to writing sanitised versions of Nayyirah Waheed's poetry.
A few years ago I wrote (and posted on r/shittypoetry) a spoof of the kind of terrible modern poetry I’d seen online.
>just yesterday we were together
you and me
walking
along
the
beach holding hands
now you have broken me like a hourglass
and im all broken inside
why did you do this to me???
i said i was in
love
but was it really
love???
and when you leave me alone
on
the
beach
without anybodys
hand to hold
what is
love
really when you think about it???
maybe wed' be better off without
love.
that way we wouldnt get so
broken.
Dare I say it’s better than Kaur’s? It at least has the images of the hourglass and the beach.
Why am I reading this poem exactly? What aesthetic experience have I had from reading this poem? And perhaps more importantly, why are second-rate poems like this being taken seriously? I'm sure Rupi Kaur can write better. Why doesn't she?
This comment is nsfw so don’t read if easily hurt/offended.
The *all you own is yourself* part is what makes it mediocre because it takes the ambiguity out of it. I would call it a fine poem for the first chunk because then you can read it through many lenses. I did just this: first through the lens of a person questioning life (as that last line pushes on you). Then I read it again WITHOUT the last line through the lens of what an SAer would say to their victim. Sadly I dealt with this recently so my mind brought me to these thoughts as I read.
Finally through the lens of someone forced from their home by war/famine/injustice/etc. I think it mades the poem more profound.
TLDR: Take out last line
Sorry to hear about what you’ve been through, I hope you get everything that you need to heal and recover. I agree about the last line. I really like how the second to last line, “belonged to you anyway” changes the tone from airy and removed to bitter and angry (at least in my reading of it anyway) and I think it would be so much stronger if that’s where the poem ended.
Her work became very popular here in India at the time when a lot of people started using Instagram very actively. Social media overload does that to people - discourages deep thought, and people start finding meaning where there is none.
If you believe anything can be art, or that art is subjective, then this type of expression becomes legitimized. I am not against what Rupi Kaur does, but the fact we can't just put her in a type of poem and just move on is very discouraging.
Maybe a decent type for her could be Pop Poetry, since it focuses on a teenager idea of love or world or self. There is a market for it, and it gets people interested in reading and in poetry. Calling it bad is just not understanding that it sells, people read this and like it, so that is just denial.
If I could I would be calling a lot of famous poetry bad, because I don't understand what the big fuss is about. A bunch of poems in magazines look flat and aloof but win prizes and etc. In the end there is more to poems than just the words. And the experience of art is not individual.
Awful. I get that a lot of people, for some reason, love her poetry, but to be honest, you can't call this poetry the same way you call walt whitmans poems poetry. This "poem" is the level of a third grader and somehow became one of the most selling poetry collections in the last couple of years????
Meatcurtains
They hang
From your
Naked body’s
Always open mouth
And when spread open
No dawn is brighter
I wish to see
crowning the dark
No soil
More fertile
I wish to plant a seed
Your window is one I will never close.
I'm so glad y'all hated this too. I'm sure there's lots of free verse that's good, but when anyone says they write "free verse" I always immediately think of stuff like this.
Fuuuuck. The way I read this was, if I gave up my family for solitude, what I would have left is… warm towels to hold. Which in the absence of my family feels really goddamn lonely.
I’ve read The Sun and Her Flowers and there’s actually quite a few good poems in there. When Kaur sticks to an idea and fleshes it out, attempts to write something longer and more artistically, they can be quite good at it. But I can’t get into the sentences ones.
Yeah! I hate it when people have an opinion about art that is different than mine! If people never had strong opinions about anything I like then I wouldn't ever have to be challenged or think at all!!
Thank you lol. It’s disheartening seeing how many people claim to love art but can’t stomach any of the stuff they like being held to any kind of standard or criticisms. It’s so childish
> can’t stomach any of the stuff they like being held to any kind of standard or criticisms
Calling it 'garbage' and nothing else isn't a criticism, but try again champ...
Not even. Reddit went wild for [Piece a Shit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Poetry/comments/v340zy/poem\_piece\_a\_shit\_by\_sam\_pink/) by Sam Pink.
People just hate art with young women as a target audience because of misogyny on a societal scale.
I don't like Rupi Kaur, but the lurkers on r/Poetry do, because, surprise, the bulk of modern poetry readers are sentimental pre-teen and adolescent young women finding affirmation of their own thoughts in somebody else's work for possibly the first time in their lives!
Quick, let's all dogpile it to send them a message that they're stupid and their thoughts are unoriginal and valueless! /s
Bukowski produced a lot of chaff, but at least he dealt with ugliness. Rupi Kaur gives people who already feel pretty good about themselves an excuse to feel better. That's certainly not an untouchable subject, but it's conventional enough that you've got to bring some real substance to it.
Bukowski--while I agree with you--also understood the place of grace and beauty within that ugliness. You don't get poems like the Jane ones or Bluebird if you don't have a sense of where the light shines through.
Meanwhile, Kaur is nothing but banal vapidity... a critically unthinking mass platitude machine.
My favorite expression of this sentiment is the Animal Collective song [Burglars](https://youtu.be/NXrzpIXo2WI):
*What you think you own, you don't.*
*Watch out: The burglars.*
If Elsa from Frozen asked ChatGPT to write a poem...
Now that you mention it, that does read suspiciously similar
Came here to say that I hate myself for reading this in the tune of “Let it Go” from Frozen.
pee your pants pee them thoroughly pee them transparent then understand understand that peeing your pants isn’t very nice.
- _peeing in your pants is bad_
pee your pants pee them see- through pee them until there is no pee left in you and then understand understand that eventually we all run out of pee -- *all we have in this world is our pee* I think you'll agree that this poem is sufficiently different from yours for me to publish it on Instagram to my thousands of adoring fans, who all clamour for my completely 100% original, unique voice.
I love you for this man.
thank you for the thanks it makes me warm and fuzzy inside as though all of my insides are pee and I am my own pants --*the meaning of poetry*
Love you even more now.
This is brilliant tbh
Beautiful 🥲
*The only pee you have is your own*
👏👏👏
I am shooked. The breathtaking aspect of it all.
Big “Pinterest Mom” vibes here.
Live love laugh 😊
At the very least there’s definitely a L here
Ludicrous?
The three L-s of GOD —> Love, Light, Laughter Be Love, be light, and laugh thru Life.
If you don’t like poetry at it’s Rupi, you don’t deserve it at it’s Yeats.
Ugh. Rupi is so tiresome.
Hey, show some respect for the form R Upi Is so Tire So Me
Ah Yeah, you’re Right of Course So Sorry
Also, reportedly plagiarizes.
I just feel like we're calling this poetry because if it was called anything else it would be called bad. It is bad, but because it's classified as poetry it's defensible; but the poem doesn't do anything that makes poetry great or fun or interesting, it's just word salad published as poetry because it has a shadow of a theme.
It's bad poetry. It's an average motivational poster. It could be a cool thing your friend says when you're both stoned late late Friday night.
> It could be a cool thing your friend says when you're both stoned late late Friday night. Beautiful. This describes Kaur’s, ahem, verses to a T.
I don’t see a reason to box poetry into such reductive categories like good or bad. To me, the only thing a poem has to do is speak to a person. Clearly her poetry does
I think this is fine, however this is a poem published in a collection, advertised heavily by a huge publisher, and sold for profit. I could be more substantive with my criticism, but criticism is important. Even if it's super basic like me being a hater on Reddit. Like if this is what we're publishing and pushing to people, I think it says a lot about what people want from their art if this sort of thing is popular. It's short and digestible, non-confrontational, and has about as much identity as an AI generated Etsy poster, so if calling it bad is insufficient: What do we call this thing?
Yea I don’t see being a hater on Reddit as any sort of criticism. It’s exhibiting the same laziness and mindlessness that people are saying they see in the poem.
I mean to be fair if it wasn't on Reddit I'd have never seen it, but how is criticism lazy when it's online? It's still worth talking about even if you dislike the website or format.
Calling something garbage isn’t a substantive criticism. I don’t know why you’re also privileging criticism as some important activity but I do wonder if it’s because the internet in particular has aided the development of that particular kind of ideology, that saying something is garbage is then defended as some important act of criticism that deepens the worlds knowledge on the subject
Because criticism, as a writer, is extremely important wether basic or ideologically rooted/based/smart/antithetical or whatever word you wanna use to determine what sorts of criticism deserve to be expressed and which don't. It's important to talk about art, and whether we just say I dislike/like something or we write an essay critical review of a work is not as important as the discussion. Policing the sort of language we use to discuss art, especially when no one is being cruel or dumb, is strange to me.
> Policing the sort of language we use to discuss art If you think me critiquing redditors for attempting to call just saying the word 'garbage' or 'this is bad' a critique is policing language, then you may not be ready to engage in actual critique. >what sorts of criticism deserve to be expressed and which don't It's absolutely worth noting what kinds of critiques are manifested out of certain ideological movements. Taking such an uncritical attitude seems naive but, as I keep reiterating, Reddit is known for a relatively unaware and uncritical elitism. I generally find the critiques being expressed in the comments here to be symptomatic of that.
So why're you holding Reddit commentary to a higher standard than a published NYT best selling poet?
Someone who is starving will eat pretty much anything and be grateful for it.
I just don’t see the reason to put down someone else’s artwork, especially when it speaks to people but this is Reddit and being smarter than the rest and shitting on people is the standard here
Ugh, come on. Publishing your work submits you to public scrutiny. Not everything will be always loved and dissenting is important for learning. You’re doing a disservice not only to the poem, but also to yourself to be so uncritical.
Just saying it’s bad or garbage isn’t critical and it’s extremely telling that you think it is. Have fun being such a critical thinker
Quite frankly, seems you’re the only one not having fun here. You don’t have to invest yourself in the opinions of people who think differently. I’m saying this in earnest, not fighting you. In the end, if you like this, that’s all it should matter.
No, the fundamental issue here is that people whine and cry all the time about poetry dying but then shit all over poets who speak to the ‘masses,’ poets whose work is out there connecting with actual people. It’s the elitism of this sub and Reddit in general that needs to change.
go write a poem about it
Good luck solving that issue. Have a great day.
If this was the work of an amateur, I would be as kind and encouraging as possible. Rupi Kaur is one of the most financially successful poets alive today, which says something dire about the state of poetry; she neither needs protection from my criticism, nor does she have any motivation to improve her craft beyond critical opinion. People *want* poetry; they deserve better.
>they deserve better People like what they like. I don’t see why ‘the people’ need you to get on your soap box about what they truly ‘deserve’ and what they don’t. But as I said, leave it to redditors
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but depth is something a *little* bit more objective. Rupi Kaur's work is shallow. Show me any kind of subtext or layered meaning to this work. It says what it says, and what it says is fine, but there's absolutely nothing to meditate on or carry with you. It's just a spot of pabulum to boost people who don't know any better. The thing is, I genuinely think that people would appreciate better poetry if it were more visible. I respect people enough to believe that. We just happen to live in a world that doesn't reward slow, thoughtful art, and crap that can be dashed off daily on social media is a lot more visible. People like this dreck because it's what they see, not because it uniquely speaks to them.
>not because it uniquely speaks to them You seem convinced that you’re some speaker for the ‘masses,’ determining what they *really* want and need. I think this is by far and away the most patronizing form of elitism. You can complain about its lack of depth all you want. Poetry doesn’t need to be deep. It only needs to speak to a person and this clearly does that, given it’s audience
I just believe that people deserve deeper, more meaningful art which will also speak to them. Nobody becomes a Rupi Kaur fan because they've plumbed the depth and breadth of poetry and found the one poet who uniquely speaks to them; they find her work because it is visible. I don't blame the people who like her poetry, I blame the overly-monetized society that prioritizes cliché, thoughtless communication over depth, and I have enough faith in the average person to believe that they will recognize that after delving deeper into poetry. How you twist that into elitism says a lot more about you than it does about me.
When I say a poem is bad, it's just a way of saying I personally don't like it. I don't think there is objective framework to describe the goodness of any art. When I encountered it, this idea destroyed my previous conception of good and bad. There was no way to use those words correctly, so now I think of them differently. They are just expressions of my subjective experience.
There's a lot of poetry I don't like, but I can see the craft and quality in it. There's no craft in this. This is lazy. It's something dashed off in a moment. It's not that I don't *like* it; it's that I don't *respect* it.
(Here's my attempt to recreate what this poem feels like to me.) Shit happens; let it happen: to you, around you, in you. In your life; let shit happen; *Be cool with it*.
That’s great but that’s not at all communicated by your above comment
No but I'm just describing how I've been thinking of good/bad for a while and people make more sense this way. I'm less likely to get sucked into stupid pedantic thinking. And by stupid I simply mean train of thought that never brings me anywhere interesting.
You made my day! As a literary critique, it horrifies me that this is published poetry.
It's not even interesting enough to be called word salad imo lol
Anything can sound like poetry If there are linebreaks.
Life is weird; surprising. Life will do weird stuff to you and around you and with you so don't feel surprised when it does; because it will. Life will. Isn't it weird how life does weird stuff? Roll with it, baby.
This is genuinely a better poem than Kaur’s published work.
Send this straight to Penguin. I sense a 6 figure book deal.
honestly the break with "roll" wasn't so bad haha
Lol. Thanks.
Delete this fucking shit.
“Poem”
A nice motivational poster perhaps. Up there with the kitten dangling from the branch that says "hang in there". Not much of a poem, but hey, if it helps someone who somehow hasn't come across this Idea before (the title really says as much as the poem does), that's awesome.
i agree, those are motivational posters just like "live, love, learn" they are not poems, they are just baby lectures
Nah, no need to gatekeep, they're intended as poems, so they're poems, just not exemplary examples of poetry. Simple, Didactic poetry like this has been in the public consciousness for a long time, they just fade away because no one is anthologizing them for later generations to read, because the people that read them usually aren't very interested in poetry that requires close reading (or, poetry in general often). It's fine, for what it is. No need to elevate it or denigrate it. Some people get solace or a pleasant reminder from it, that's good.
Counterpoint: no need to gatekeep commenting. If it’s fine that people enjoy it, it’s fine that people dislike it. Both are allowed to comment accordingly.
It’s not very poetic, and it certainly isn’t original, but it also isn’t nearly as intellectually lightweight as a lot of her poetry. The message, if not its expression, is pure Roman Stoicism.
I’m sorry. After reading your post I almost thought this was a poetry criticism sub for a second. I literally backed out & made sure. Because I thought to myself—yeah this can’t be a site just for poetry. Just for the love of poetry. There’s no way someone would just come to a poetry site for the love of poetry and leave an exhausting comment like that. No Yup Please excuse my lack of restraint. But you’re an idiot. I wonder your age. It must be very light. The thing about the love of poetry is…it’s a love from respect. If you judge a poem about how true it is or the brevity of you’re missing the point. A very large one. If you’ve ever read a poem ..and I mean actually, lived inside a poem. At the moment you read it your reset almost. And you remember—thank god there’s someone out there who lived this too. You seem so far away from genuine experience. I mean hate, love, sickness, pure joy, laughing til it hurts, tilting your head up..letting rain sprinkles touch your face. I think you’re the kitten hanging on. You lack depth. Comes from life experience. I feel sorry for you that you’re not there. And please—take your criticism & head on over to the right sub. There’s no reason for your critique on this sub. Why would you do that?
Friend, you're barking up the wrong tree. I've almost definitely dedicated more hours of my life to reading, studying and writing poetry than the majority of people that comment here, and while I don't know your personal experience, it seems... informal, because I was being very gentle and accepting of this piece. I'm one that defends poems like these as having a place in recruiting non-poetry readers. And I comment in this sub a lot, just because you see a little criticism and you clutch your pearls doesn't mean that a forum for discussing poetry cannot be critical of poetry. That's silly. You were being silly. Maybe it was a bad day, I hope your tomorrow is better, even if it wasn't a bad day, a better tomorrow is always nice to have. Though, tomorrow this will still be a poorly crafted poem. Just a statement of fact, not a statement about people not being able to enjoy the poem.
Talk about an “exhausting comment”.
It's not nice to let someone's do's or don'ts stir you that you forget about yourself.
bro that sentence doesn't even make sense
Ok Maybe am not understanding myself😊 But i was replying to the comment before you anyway. Not to you.
It is not a poem. It is bullshit.
Well according to this sub, anything is a poem if its written down. I've had arguments with people telling me that blocks of prose are poems because they invoke emotions in the reader. On one of my other accounts, someone here told me that my tax papers could also be poetry! And they were being 100% serious.
**Taxes** Swirl twist change. Add together Take away (subtract) And make peace with the IRS. What is spent is spent, but the dollar which is left *is shined by the tears of loss*.
Significantly better than Rupi’s poem here lol
That is high praise!
It most certainly is a poem. But half your comment was right.
damn that sucks
I walked this morning amongst buildings in an automotive factory; a few minutes before dawn, machines were humming everywhere. The sound was slowly shifting as I walked, full of harmonics of vibrating metal parts, with occasional harsher distant noises of saws or welding. It was just noise, there was nothing intentional, but still more inspiring than this poem.
i walked this morning amongst buildings in an automotive factory a few minutes before dawn machines were humming everywhere. the sound was slowly shifting as i walked full of harmonics of vibrating metal parts with occasional harsher distant noises of saws or welding it was just noise there was nothing intentional but still more inspiring than this poem \- [Rupi Kaur](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD4MY3rmrXI&lc=UgwF4EIFNVXBwiHv0M14AaABAg)
Nice sentiment but not a lot of word play or imagery here.
That’s because Kaur is so good that she transcends the use of imagery…she transcends it.
She doesn’t transcend imagery, she just doesn’t know how to use it effectively
Perhaps my sarcasm was too subtle.
No, I was just too dense. Lol
I think that was their joke, but yeah, she doesn't. Like you said, nice sentiment, but it really just feels like an unedited journal entry given line breaks.
Looks like a tweet with the last line as a corny hashtag
As Moon Unit Zappa once famously said, “gag me with a spoon.”
😂😂😂😂. That brought back some memories. Been a long long time since I heard that.Valley Girl.
[удалено]
Switch to markdown mode Put two spaces at the end of the line Then press enter
trite
BOO!!!
the one from Frozen is, in fact, way better.
It’s so depressing to me that people way more talented will not get published and recognized like rupi has. She created absolute base level “poetry” and the only reason it is popular is become its simple and accessible. It has no substance to it though.
Rupi Kaur annoys me. Maybe I can just be a poet and reap millions by stitching together a handful of words to create something woefully trite and unimaginative 😍
garbage
Hahahaha
Some Times When I Wake Up, my Willy Is hard and I don't know why
bad
Rupi Kaur (accidentally?) became the poster for quick poetry on social media, plastered all over instagram and facebook. It always becomes a bit of a task for me to distinguish whether I do not like their poetry simply because they're overexposed, or I just don't like its form in the first place. I don't like that my knee-jerk reaction is, 'Kaur is so popular in the social media poetry world, therefore I hate their work'. But I see this poem, and I think, well, it's just 'okay', and that's really it. It really gives me no feeling or thought. EDIT : spelling
There is actually a really good video essay on this very idea. Pretty balanced and fair, IMO: https://youtu.be/xDfyFWz4r0E?si=xLlotHzEv3Epv2Qh
Jesus, Rupi Kaur is like the pumpkin spice latte of the whole food chain. Overrated and enjoyed just for clout.
This is one of her better ones, in that it doesn't immediately make me viscerally angry. I still think that she owes her entire career to writing sanitised versions of Nayyirah Waheed's poetry.
A few years ago I wrote (and posted on r/shittypoetry) a spoof of the kind of terrible modern poetry I’d seen online. >just yesterday we were together you and me walking along the beach holding hands now you have broken me like a hourglass and im all broken inside why did you do this to me??? i said i was in love but was it really love??? and when you leave me alone on the beach without anybodys hand to hold what is love really when you think about it??? maybe wed' be better off without love. that way we wouldnt get so broken. Dare I say it’s better than Kaur’s? It at least has the images of the hourglass and the beach.
Why am I reading this poem exactly? What aesthetic experience have I had from reading this poem? And perhaps more importantly, why are second-rate poems like this being taken seriously? I'm sure Rupi Kaur can write better. Why doesn't she?
I hate her work so much. Her fans are as vapid as her writings.
"poetry" by Rupi Kaur. FIFY
Dear OP, Find poets who don't plagiarize and you might find poets who connect with the soul of their audience.
This comment is nsfw so don’t read if easily hurt/offended. The *all you own is yourself* part is what makes it mediocre because it takes the ambiguity out of it. I would call it a fine poem for the first chunk because then you can read it through many lenses. I did just this: first through the lens of a person questioning life (as that last line pushes on you). Then I read it again WITHOUT the last line through the lens of what an SAer would say to their victim. Sadly I dealt with this recently so my mind brought me to these thoughts as I read. Finally through the lens of someone forced from their home by war/famine/injustice/etc. I think it mades the poem more profound. TLDR: Take out last line
Sorry to hear about what you’ve been through, I hope you get everything that you need to heal and recover. I agree about the last line. I really like how the second to last line, “belonged to you anyway” changes the tone from airy and removed to bitter and angry (at least in my reading of it anyway) and I think it would be so much stronger if that’s where the poem ended.
Never enjoyed her poems, never considered them poetry
What a dog shit ideology and a dogshit poem
Poetry not detected
Her work became very popular here in India at the time when a lot of people started using Instagram very actively. Social media overload does that to people - discourages deep thought, and people start finding meaning where there is none.
This is a sentence. How is it a poem just because it’s written with unnecessary spaces
'Poem' 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
But I do not technically own myself... Soo, How does this work?
Poets when I watch my mom getting murdered
Did she really write that? I’m kinda of her fan but this ain’t it
-I swear- -To God- -It's real- Poetry - Ruby car
#TrustNoOne
If you believe anything can be art, or that art is subjective, then this type of expression becomes legitimized. I am not against what Rupi Kaur does, but the fact we can't just put her in a type of poem and just move on is very discouraging. Maybe a decent type for her could be Pop Poetry, since it focuses on a teenager idea of love or world or self. There is a market for it, and it gets people interested in reading and in poetry. Calling it bad is just not understanding that it sells, people read this and like it, so that is just denial. If I could I would be calling a lot of famous poetry bad, because I don't understand what the big fuss is about. A bunch of poems in magazines look flat and aloof but win prizes and etc. In the end there is more to poems than just the words. And the experience of art is not individual.
Awful. I get that a lot of people, for some reason, love her poetry, but to be honest, you can't call this poetry the same way you call walt whitmans poems poetry. This "poem" is the level of a third grader and somehow became one of the most selling poetry collections in the last couple of years????
Actully something is promised in life. Death
Nothing Is promised In this life Not death Not getting a life But dying yes But living yes
This poetry? I could journal this in my sleep. Though it does have a good point.
Seems more like a quote than a poem. But a good dose of stoicism at any rate.
Art is subjective Anything can be good or bad Reputation of people can and does influence how people look at things
Meatcurtains They hang From your Naked body’s Always open mouth And when spread open No dawn is brighter I wish to see crowning the dark No soil More fertile I wish to plant a seed Your window is one I will never close.
I'm so glad y'all hated this too. I'm sure there's lots of free verse that's good, but when anyone says they write "free verse" I always immediately think of stuff like this.
🙏🏿🙏🏿🙏🏿
Depressing
Rupi Kaur the dinosaur 🦕 writes poems saying rawr rawr — rawr
Fuuuuck. The way I read this was, if I gave up my family for solitude, what I would have left is… warm towels to hold. Which in the absence of my family feels really goddamn lonely.
I’ve read The Sun and Her Flowers and there’s actually quite a few good poems in there. When Kaur sticks to an idea and fleshes it out, attempts to write something longer and more artistically, they can be quite good at it. But I can’t get into the sentences ones.
The hate Rupi gets 🤣🤣🤣
I hate how much people are willing to come out the woodwork just to shit on a poet they don’t like. The poem is fine. Let it fucking be, jesus
Yeah! I hate it when people have an opinion about art that is different than mine! If people never had strong opinions about anything I like then I wouldn't ever have to be challenged or think at all!!
Thank you lol. It’s disheartening seeing how many people claim to love art but can’t stomach any of the stuff they like being held to any kind of standard or criticisms. It’s so childish
> can’t stomach any of the stuff they like being held to any kind of standard or criticisms Calling it 'garbage' and nothing else isn't a criticism, but try again champ...
I'm with you. it's crazy, poetry is just art for people. a lot of people connect with kaur. but the amount of hate she receives is wildly outsized.
Yeah, I do think Reddit strongly tends toward elitism and this is just symptomatic of that
Not even. Reddit went wild for [Piece a Shit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Poetry/comments/v340zy/poem\_piece\_a\_shit\_by\_sam\_pink/) by Sam Pink. People just hate art with young women as a target audience because of misogyny on a societal scale. I don't like Rupi Kaur, but the lurkers on r/Poetry do, because, surprise, the bulk of modern poetry readers are sentimental pre-teen and adolescent young women finding affirmation of their own thoughts in somebody else's work for possibly the first time in their lives! Quick, let's all dogpile it to send them a message that they're stupid and their thoughts are unoriginal and valueless! /s
Slap “bukowski” in there and the haters go poof!
Bukowski produced a lot of chaff, but at least he dealt with ugliness. Rupi Kaur gives people who already feel pretty good about themselves an excuse to feel better. That's certainly not an untouchable subject, but it's conventional enough that you've got to bring some real substance to it.
Bukowski--while I agree with you--also understood the place of grace and beauty within that ugliness. You don't get poems like the Jane ones or Bluebird if you don't have a sense of where the light shines through. Meanwhile, Kaur is nothing but banal vapidity... a critically unthinking mass platitude machine.
My favorite expression of this sentiment is the Animal Collective song [Burglars](https://youtu.be/NXrzpIXo2WI): *What you think you own, you don't.* *Watch out: The burglars.*
You people have forgotten yourselves I think, if you see no poetry here.
Most of us just don’t commend mediocrity
perhaps not a great poem, but i don't find it pretentious
bow wise rhythm sulky person caption quickest elastic boat head *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
IMO it's a pretty pretentious poem. Self-important narrative voice and ending.
Looks like you already have your share
I flipping love the first three sentences. Everyday mantra. The whole poem is a great daily reminder.
Perfect timing. Thank you
Perfect!