Can We Please Stop Pretending That Rupi Kaur Is A Good Poet?

On refusing to accept mediocrity as the standard and the importance of good art

I’m currently in San Diego, curled up like a pretzel in a poofy rocking chair in my best friend Alanna’s living room, thinking about the last time I’d come down to see her. It was July 2022, and I was pissed.

I’d ended up in San Diego after returning from a whirlwind three-month stint in Colombia. The trip was incredible, but admittedly, I’d high-tailed out of the U.S. to escape the weird feelings lingering after a semi-serious situationship (or whatever the hell it was) had suddenly evaporated right before my flight. So I spent three months pounding my weight in empanadas and trying to perrear the hollowness away, and it kind of worked. But now that I was back on U.S. soil, I had time to ruminate.

I was pissed that I’d spent so much time aimlessly wandering the tropics, hoping that a sense of purpose might someday hit me as hard as the aguardiente was every night. I was pissed that I suddenly had to pay $6 for iced lattes instead of $1.85, and I was pissed I’d left the U.S. to escape my feelings altogether. So I booked a ticket to San Diego, ready to redeem myself with some much-needed best friend time. But soon, I found something else to grumble about: the contents of the living room bookshelf.

I’ll spare her now by saying the books were not hers; they’d been left by an old roommate before moving out. I leafed through them, curious if perhaps a dose of poetry might send my mood skyward. Home Body by Rupi Kaur. A couple of collections by Yung Pueblo. A book I can no longer remember the name of, boasting a radiant pink cover and hot pink pages to boot.

The longer I sat on the floor reading, the more I could feel the rage seething inside me. I stewed and stomped around the living room, grumbling about the mess Instagram poets had made of the craft. I’m sure Alanna could feel the bad vibes radiating from me all the way from the other room, because she came in and asked me what was wrong. The rage bubbled over.

My feelings were unresolved, I spewed. I’d let go of someone I’d actually hoped I could have a future with. The U.S. was dirty and expensive. And to top it all off, people simply weren’t writing good poetry anymore.

At a loss, I held the books in my hands, limp and tepid. These were published by wildly popular authors, authors who had amassed hundreds of thousands of followers online and went on press tours and made a lot of money. They’d nudged themselves into mainstream literature with lines like, “the laughers dream & the dreamers laugh most.”

?!?!?!

I tried, and failed, to reconcile with this fact well after I’d returned to the Bay Area. I asked myself: if this is the kind of stuff people want to read, does that mean I need to start writing like this?

I’m not trying to put myself on a pedestal here—the quality of my work is far from where I’d like it to be, and maybe my fruitless Medium poetry proves it—but still, the cultural shift towards blandness fills me to the rafters with existential dread. There are plenty of incredible poets out there, many of whom are still living and producing excellent work to this day. So why have authors like Rupi Kaur become the face of contemporary poetry?

In my anguish, I turned to Google. I typed furiously into the search bar: Why do people think Rupi Kaur is a good poet? Lo and behold, Quora.com blessed me with the best answer I could find:

I had not heard of Rupi Kaur so I decided to spend an hour or so reading her verse. I was reminded very much of the kind of work that my Year 7 students used to write when I gave them ‘write in the style of’ tasks, such as Hallmark greeting card messages, to cite the most relevant.

Essentially, she records a passing thought (or memory) in a sentence that runs on and often excludes punctuation, giving one the impression of a verse form. They are not hard to write:

my thoughts like

ripples on your pond

not

deep

but necessary

I could just have easily written:

My thoughts are like ripples on your pond, not deep but necessary.

This is just a line of prose.

The verse form creates a momentary impression of profundity and in some cases Kaur has some decent sentiments to express. It is perfectly suited to the instagram grab or FB moment and the young audience who are her admirers.

I am for anyone making an effort to write and publish, so more power to her. But it is a stretch to call her work good poetry.

Shoutout to Quora user David Ireland for this analysis. It’s a lot nicer than the one that I’ve loaded the cannon with. And to be fair, publishing anything is a brave and noble endeavor. But I’m not going to sit here and pretend that just because something is published and popular that it’s actually any good. The rise of the Instagram poet signals we’ve accepted half-hearted writing as acceptable, and this is something I can’t stand for.

My main issue is that Instagram poets lack any semblance of artistic flair. I wouldn’t necessarily say their words are completely devoid of substance, but the presentation of their ideas is fundamentally underwhelming, not in the least bit surprising or delightful or shocking; as tragic and uninteresting as a flavorless tomato, or perhaps a plain filet of steamed cod. It is a haphazard and lazy concoction of the poet’s own unfortunate mechanism; it is the delivery of a steaming plate of unfulfilled potential.

Instagram poets don’t understand the mechanics of poetry. Some of them play nice with a rhythm but the concept of word choice is obsolete to them. Others still string pretty, meaningless words together solely for onomatopoeia’s sake. In essence, they’ve mass-produced their watered-down thoughts—better described as feelings scribbled down hastily as they flit across the cerebral cortex—and packaged them neatly in lowercase Times New Roman for blind consumption and braindead recirculation. For likes. Relatability has become the only standard to which the Instagram poet’s art is held. And while relatability is the core of any good piece of work, it cannot make for the parsley garnish, the squeeze of lemon, the dash of cayenne pepper that makes something taste objectively good. You don’t have to like the taste of citrus or the heat of spice to recognize that which makes a dish delectable: artistry. 

I’m not arguing for the aesthetics of a piece alone; a poem’s success is measured by its ability to make people feel. But simply recognizing a string of words as relatable or even mildly insightful is not—or should not—be the end goal of publishing poetry. The goal should be to rip open and bleed dry the hearts of those reading, or perhaps to stir the audience into a kind of shocked, uneasy stillness. To remind them of their humanity and their capacity for emotion.

You don’t even have to do all this with original thought. You just have to do it with gusto, with intention. With mastery of your medium. You have to do it like an artist.

Maybe this is my way of imploring to us all (most certainly myself) to refuse to accept mediocrity as the standard, especially when it comes to the art we consume, create, and let shape our perceptions. I’m asking—begging, even—that we do the work to read beyond the vapid line breaks and hollow one-liners. Do we really want to accept mediocrity as the new standard, or will we reach for the rich, full-bodied aromas of well-written work instead? Because, at the end of the day, it’s not half-baked Instagram poetry that’s going to cleave our hearts open like jowls on a bloody butcher block.

I realize that this essay is becoming borderline insufferable, so I’ll close with this widely-circulated Dead Poets Society line:

“We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”