/lit/ - Literature

I'm going to make a case for Rupi here. She gets shit on all the time. Honestly, it's probably deserved. That said, I think we go overboard with it. Hear me out.

Rupi's poems are perfect for this generation. They're immediate. They're accessible. They're heartfelt. Are they concerned with the conventions of poetry? Absolutely not... but to a group of people who get instant gratification from everything else in life, she's just adapting the form to fit that. I mean... what's a poem for if not to make you feel something? She's just taking a shortcut is all. Here's the emotion. Feel it. Fitzgerald once said (Yea, yea, I know) "My theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever after." At the very least, we can say that Kaur is checking that first box.

Now, my second argument forms when you compare her to other waves of contemporary poetry. I, personally, hate most contemporary poetry. The whole free-form, use obscure words, slightly sentimental crap that we've seen time and time again for 40 years is tired. Rupi says fuck all that. Rupi says I will not say one thing that you do not understand. If she's a fraud, then fine, but you can't say she's not wearing that on her sleeve.

Do I think these poems are good under critical lens? No. Do they connect with me? No. BUT, do I think they open the door for someone to take the short, straightforward template and make something strong critically from it? Yes, yes I do.

>>12487651

Rupi Kaur's poems are obviously stupid, and the argument that she is deconstructing what poetry means in the spirit of a woman not giving a fuck about dead white male's opinions of what a poem should be like is also obviously stupid. What you should be asking yourself is how these women, Rupi and the collective arthoes with their powers combined seem to be able to ignore or not even recognize how absurdly funny these poems are in their shittyness. Like, look at pic related. The ending: "i popped their heads off / and ate them". How can you not fucking realize how funny that shit is? Especially after the "one / by / one" lines, which are not even that bad and make it seem like it could be an enjoyable poem. The hidden message here is one of a feminine trick: a power move. I cannot imagine hearing someone say "and ate them" at the end of that poem out loud without me rolling on the floor laughing. However, try saying it yourself, right now, stop reading this and say it out loud. If you did, you realize something, or at least have a glimpse feeling of something being there. And that there is a hidden female power move. It's unconscious, but it's deliberate. It is a powering through, unconsciously intentional ignoring (or cutting out) of the funniness of the line while still keeping the absurdity (which is indeed very Kafkian). The goal of this is, as some may guess is, essentially, castration. The unnatural severing of the joke into two parts, dividing the absurdity from the humour that is naturally supposed to succeed it and resolve the tension is analogous to the entrapment of a simple guy while he's arguing with his girl and the oppressive silence, the judging look in the girl's eyes and the condescendingly sterilizing tone in her self-assured voice that all work together to signal: Yes, what I'm saying is absurd, but you will not laugh. And you will enter my world, with my rules, where everything you believe will stop making sense, and I will be right. And you will believe it.


This is the essence of the enjoyment females get from Rupi Kaur. Note that even though my post has been mostly negative, I don't believe it's all that malevolent. But in its core, it is wish-fulfillment of dominance power-fantasies manifested in the form of stupid, childlike ultrasincerity and confidence in something that's stupid, obviously wrong and plain shitty, but alas, feminine.

It’s that time again.