Glad it helped!

🙌

I'll add also that your selection of comparison poems was excellent! As someone speaking from experience, what Kaur's poem does is not helpful in terms of dealing with this kind of trauma. To any person who has experienced any kind of trauma, speaking it out loud is helpful, yes, but it's not adding anything for the reader. Actually, reading poems like the examples you presented, is much more valuable. It took a long time to have a healthy relationship to sexual experience, and literature that approaches the topic in truly unique ways, can be unbelievably helpful because it takes you out of the "straightforward" discourse and can help you connect with yourself in a new way. Especially when it comes to the shame we heap on ourselves. The Rilke and Neruda are outside of that. They transcend that view and that discourse of shame because they have an immediate connection to the physical and psychological experience and all that is amazing about it. Had a therapist told me this before I felt it actually work, I would have laughed in their face. Rupi Kaur's poems, however, do not do that. They echo back a part of the experience without adding much.

?

I am plotting my return! Haha

I have returned!

I'll check him out!

This is a great comment! It's not a condemnation of people's response to her work to say that her poetry is not good. I'm all for people buying bodice rippers if that is what they want to read but that doesn't mean that we must validate bodice ripper literature as great (unless it has literary merit). I know many people who get upset at how little recognition "genre" literature gets in terms of general prizes. It seems like they take it as a personal attack when the literature they have fun reading is not regarded as great. I also remember the grief Bloom got for calling Harry Potter bad children's literature because it was seen as him denying the fact that it "gets kids to read." (of course his opinion would have to be reevaluated now that people hate JKR ;))

@@justaname999 Hi sweetie !!! Thanks for the reply, you have very interesting thoughts, I share your perspective 100%. Rupi is great, I think she deserves everything she has achieved, there is a vast audience for the product she sells and I completely respect that. I think that having created such popular books is something worth applauding, it is not easy to create and produce something so popular and I understand that there are many writers jealous of this woman's success. I see many wonderful things in Rupi, I have noticed that she has a particular talent for networking, she is very beautiful and glamorous, she manages her social networks very well, she is charismatic and has a good instinct for trends. I think the vast majority of artists from different disciplines generally lack business and marketing skills, but Rupi does have this going for her, which is wonderful. What she does not have, according to my point of view and that of many people, is precisely a commitment to the art of literature. Those of us who have read poetry of indisputable quality do not hesitate for a second to affirm that what she writes should not be called poetry, because it is not. It fascinates me that language is so broad that there are words to describe each thing and each type of person. I like to call things by their names and Rupi is a writer but she is not a poet in any way. And that does not mean that she should not be respected, I believe that she deserves all the love, appreciation and respect in the world for having achieved what she has achieved, I do give her credit. I think it's great that there are writers who are more market-oriented business people and others who are more purely literary artists, in fact you can be one or the other and you can also be both at the same time. And Rupi's audience deserves all the respect in the world, being a client of hers and purchasing her books and derivative products has absolutely nothing wrong, what she writes resonates with many people and not all the jealousy of all the envious writers is going to change that. Rupi is someone from whom you can learn a lot if you open your mind to the right extent. Hugs and blessings from Lima-Perú.

Yes!!

and all of them are costly

i appreciate your work here. Thank you for taking her work serious enough to actually pay attention to quality. Imo, you actually respect her poetry by not holding back from your opinion.

That's an interesting way of saying that she sucks at writing poetry. Ironically, it is your tuition money that has been wasted, as you cannot distinguish great, beautiful poetry from absolute drivel written by a dilettante. You paid money to have your head stuffed with ideology, and this is precisely why you have to resort to ideology to try and prop up her poetry rather than discussing the merits of the work itself. (It doesn't have any merit). That aside, I read poetry from all kinds of people and cultures. I understand that there differences in form and point of view. One of my favorite poets is Pablo Neruda, by example. But he actually knows how to write poetry that is alive. But you wouldn't understand a thing like that.

How and Kaur write in the tradition of other cultures if she, self admittedly, doesn’t read.

Being bilingual, female, immigrant, and “writes in the tradition of another culture” really isn’t an excuse to writing shallow, basic, unstructured and later on calling it “poetry”.. poetry. Sorry. Literally background isn’t the subject let alone something compared, (since it’s not an issue to begin with) rather, it’s what’s put into her work. Also the way you say it would be a waste of money to be taught by him, maybe i do understand your point of view.

Poetry shouldn't need context. If you say that her poetry is good BC she's a first- gen female immigrant? You're asking us to punch-down and give her a break - and as a writer in that same class (ignore my pic; that's not me), I'd wager that even Kaur herself wouldn't want you judging her writing based on her sex and race. No one wants that - and no reader should want to read something just to fulfill some quota, unless they're virtue-signaling. The truth is? There are SUPERB female first gen immigrant writers - Kaur's just not one of them. Also, I suspect she lacks the skills to carry out a full and extraordinary novel like, for example, Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake or Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. And respectfully? Those longer works take more effort to read, too - not just to write. Give them a try and I think you'll be blown-away by the sheer talent of these authors - also first-gen female immigrants. My feelings about Kaur's writings are brief: there's an adage that says there's only 2 kinds of poetry - great and awful. And this is the latter. It's adolescent and indulgent. That's the most I could say. As an aside, if you don't understand why Hemingway is great - or you think the strength of his prose lies in him being an old white guy? You need to give your head a shake. For your sake, I hope your thoughts (and tastes) re-assemble better.

The description of Hemingway as the author of conservative prose is perhaps one of the saddest things I have read in as long as I can remember!

Can't you be quiet instead of taking your left foot out of your mouth and putting your right foot in?

@@rapier1954 I’ve never heard that idiom before

Selling out an auditorium doesnt make you a poet. It makes you marketable. And that is all Kaur is. There are multitudes of modern brilliant female poets who go unrecognized because they have actual talent.