What Constitutes a Poem?

The opening image to this article should make it relatively obvious who inspired it. Rupi Kaur is an enigma to me. I believe she is many things: a feminist, an intelligent person, and a capitalist. I believe she has found that she has a talent with words, but uses it exclusively to make poetry that speaks to people on such a minimal level that it requires minimum effort with maximum profits.

Honestly, I think she got lucky.

I do not particularly recognize the statements in Milk and Honey and The Sun and Her Flowers as poems. I recognize them as that: statements. I do not think spacing words and pressing enter makes a poem a poem. Poems are about words, metaphors, syntax and diction; poems are about saying things that are difficult to say in ways that they could not otherwise be said. Poems are not sayings and sentences, followed by a dash and a name.

I believe Rupi is incredibly intelligent. She created this new form of word art that has taken the internet by storm. If you are intent on calling Rupi Kaur's statements poems, then you have to admit that she was the founder of an all-new genre of poetry: poetry for stupid people.

Her poems are not hard to understand and do not hold hidden meanings. They mean what they say and say what they mean. If someone tells you their favorite poet is Rupi Kaur, it is safe to assume that they 1) have not read any other poetry or 2) do not understand any other poetry. Her poems are poems for people that would not otherwise care about poetry. She created an entire genre based on the fact that people like to sound smarter than they are, more cultured than they are, and more interesting than they are. To recite a Rupi Kaur poem at a party in a room full of people, cup of vodka water in hand, is only something someone that has nothing else to say would do.

Poetry is words with hidden meanings or exposed meanings with different meanings; poetry is mystery and interesting syntax and diction. Poetry is something more than "do not bother holding onto that thing that does not want you" — this is dialogue by a person in a book, not a poem written by a woman that claims she is more than her words.

I cannot take Rupi Kaur seriously. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to. If anyone else wrote this way — I'm sure there are people that do who I just have not heard of in the way I have heard of Rupi — then they would face this same criticism. Rupi Kaur is not unique to me.

I know there are people who praise her simplicity and minimalism, and I can understand that — in a sense — those things make some of her words beautiful. But they do not make her words poems.

Rupi will continue to capitalize on her statements and words as they are sold to fourteen and fifteen-year-olds that haven't yet had the chance to read poetry written by anyone else, or tried to write poetry themselves. She will continue to make thousands upon thousands of dollars off of minimal work and creativity; off of writing a book in weeks and months that would take others a single day.

Rupi will continue to become richer and richer off of her "art," and people will continue to praise or criticize her. I will end this article with a Rupi-Style poem:

for her wealth, i am

jealous;

i did not think of that idea

first —

yet, i

applaud her.