The Wonder and the Rarity of Poems

On Amanda Gorman’s “poems” and why prose isn’t poetry.

Imagine a world in which the ancient art of creative communication known as poetry periodically disappears from pop culture for long stretches of time, only to re-emerge but in a shockingly degraded form. Instead of full-throated poetry, a poor semblance of a poem is paraded for the hoi palloi to revere and to enable them to forget that they’ve evidently lost the plot of adulthood and been systematically infantilized.

Imagine that the audiences celebrate this fake poem before the charm wears off and they veer to the next fad so that poetry returns to its former hibernation. Real poets remain mostly unread in the underground, their prophetic labors cast like pearls before swine on the internet with the rest of the digital flood, their poems as freely available as the poets are penniless.

There’s no need to imagine this scenario since that’s us and our dumbed-down consumer cultures. In early 2021, the poet who’s seized the spotlight to provide the greedy masses their fool’s gold is Amanda Gorman.

Amanda Gorman’s “Poems” were Political Speeches

The first re-entry of the word “poem” to popular discourse was occasioned by Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration. That’s when the media seemed to relish the opportunity to contrast the sophistication of liberal, urban society with the outbursts of Donald Trump’s pseudopresidency. Thus, the Western world fawned over the young African American Amanda Gorman and over her reading of “The Hill We Climb.”

She followed up that star turn with a poem she read to open the 2021 Super Bowl, “Chorus of the Captains.”

The fact that the media, the audience, and Gorman herself put so much emphasis on the delivery of her inauguration poem, on her peculiar, voguing hand gestures was a warning for genuine enthusiasts of poetry. Her taped Super Bowl performance added a second warning, since that poem’s emotional impact was boosted with a stirring musical background.

The reason such assists were needed is that Gorman delivered no actual poem on either occasion. She read political speeches that had the barest trappings of poetry. Her speeches had some rhythm and irregular, inexact rhymes so that even the superficial poetic aspects were faint.

At the heart of poetry in late modernity, when we’re used to seeing through the formalities of metanarrative, isn’t rhyming or meter anymore; instead, what’s always been crucial to poetic content is the heightened creativity in the choice of words, or the avoidance of prepackaged abstractions. A poem shouldn’t sound like prose, like the pedestrian talk we’re used to hearing when we’re asking for directions or ordering a Wendy’s hamburger, or when a politician is pandering to his audience with feel-good platitudes.

That’s where those two poems of Gorman’s fail, not just in their poetic quality but in their identity. Those two “poems” of hers are best thought of as political speeches dressed up to look like poems, to fool a mass audience that wouldn’t pay to read or to listen to a real poem if their life depended on it.

Demonstrating the Nature of Poetry

I’m aware this line of argument is politically incorrect and offensive on multiple levels. But the truth needn’t conform to how we feel. So I’m going to press on and demonstrate here that “Chorus of the Captains” is essentially a political speech rather than a poem.

Here’s the first part of Gorman’s Super Bowl “poem”:

“Today we honor our three captains For their actions and impact in A time of uncertainty and need. They’ve taken the lead, Exceeding all expectations and limitations, Uplifting their communities and neighbors As leaders, healers, and educators. James has felt the wounds of warfare, But this warrior still shares His home with at-risk kids. During Covid, he’s even lent a hand Love-streaming football for family and fans.”

Notice, first, that the sole creative use of language in that entire passage is the phrase “love-streaming football,” which sticks out like a sore thumb precisely because the rest is so prosaic. But leave that aside.

Let’s compare Gorman’s “poem” with part of one of Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign speeches in which he was referring to the financial crisis of 2008:

“It was tough. But I tell you what, Ohio — the American people are tougher. All across this country, people like you dug in. Some of you retrained. Some of you went back to school. Small business owners cut back on expenses, but did everything they could to keep their employees. Yes, there were setbacks. Yes, there were disappointments. But we didn’t quit. We don’t quit. Together, we’re fighting our way back.”

Now let’s divide up that part of Obama’s speech to make it look roughly like poetry:

“It was tough. But I tell you what, Ohio — the American people are tougher. All across this country, people like you dug in. Some of you retrained. Some of you went back to school. Small business owners cut back on expenses, but did everything they could to keep their employees. Yes, there were setbacks. Yes, there were disappointments. But we didn’t quit. We don’t quit. Together, we’re fighting our way back.”

The next step in this Gormanization of Obama’s political speech is to insert some comparable lines to make for a few inexact rhymes:

“It was tough. But I tell you what, Ohio — the American people are tougher. We don’t just lie down in the gutter. All across this country, people like you dug in; I heard no complaining. I saw no shoulder-shrugging. Some of you retrained. Some of you went back to school, Because on Ohio farms they don’t raise fools. Small business owners cut back on expenses, Made things a little rough around the edges, but did everything they could to keep their employees. Yes, there were setbacks. Yes, there were disappointments. A little less cheer and fewer enjoyments. But we didn’t quit. We don’t quit. Together, we’re fighting our way back. Count on us winning! Americans have that knack.”

Now ask yourself whether that dreadful abomination I’ve conjured should count as a poem just because of the hackneyed rhymes I added. No, at its core, because of its diction, that piece of writing is still a political speech. The rhymes make it only superficially poetic because they do nothing to disguise the platitudes or to improve the pedestrian thoughts and images.

Let’s proceed to the demonstration’s next step by contrasting those speeches with an actual poem I just wrote about the 2008 financial crisis:

“Zeus’s stray thunderbolt split the Olympian mount, heaving diamond boulders into the sea; clocks stopped, the galactic order reversed: spoiled godlings whined from their playpen, blamed peasants for a tardy slicing of goats’ necks; Hermes, the flashy herald, embroidered the moans till the chain of being was linked anew, and a palace sat on a volcanic peak atop the mortals’ rude tables and huts, heaps of ratty smocks and puddles of stew, the cliff cemented by rivers of tax coins.”

Notice how only a pretentious snob would try to talk like that in ordinary discourse. That’s a sign you’re dealing with at least a genuine attempt at poetry, at a heightened use of language. Do you see there the lack of abstract words like “expectations” and “limitations”? Do you recognize the attempt to show with detail and with striking metaphors rather than to tell straightforwardly what’s on the author’s mind?

Perhaps you think this isn’t really a poem because it doesn’t rhyme. Let’s add some rhymes, then, and see whether that makes all the difference.

“Zeus’s stray thunderbolt split the Olympian mount, heaving diamond boulders into the sea; ambrosia and Botox spilled from a tumbling fount past golden chariots, silk scarves, and brie; clocks stopped, the galactic order reversed: spoiled godlings whined from their playpen, their croc tears falling like cloudburst over this respite from their sanctioned mayhem; the gods blamed peasants for not slicing goats’ necks; Hermes, the flashy herald, embroidered the moans, smiled wide and mesmerized the subjects as tidal waves crashed into their homes and the chain of being was linked anew: the palace sat on a volcanic peak, a manmade mountain for the few, a pyramid in which each squirming Greek clasped hands on rude tables and huts, kneeling in ratty smocks and puddles of stew, the cliff cemented by rivers of tax coins.

Zeus sipped Chardonnay, miffed by the fuss, charged his deadly bolts and girded his loins to send those below scurrying in their zoo.”

I trust you can tell that while rhymes needn’t detract from a poem and can add charm, they’re mere formalities compared to the type of language chosen to fill out each line. The lines I added for the rhymes are only more of the same: more detailed images to extend the metaphor and to elaborate on the theme. If the added rhymes alone were to make that piece of writing a poem, they could do so only arbitrarily, because the levels of semantic creativity and specificity in the nonrhyming and rhyming versions are the same.

The Pseudo Poems on Instagram

Should Amanda Gorman be scapegoated for her pretenses? By no means! She could hardly have prepared the way all alone for the mass acceptance of her bland political speeches as masterful poems.

No, for that we can look to the fad of Instagram poetry, which preceded Gorman’s appearances and in which mostly young white women write short poems to fit on cards which they customize, photograph, and upload to social media. Some industrious authors will draw little sketches to complement their poems or type their poems on a typewriter and use wrinkled, old paper to give the whole a worn-in look.

Those visual touches are like Gorman’s hand gestures and like the music that accompanied Gorman’s reading of her Super Bowl poem: they’re distractions from the nonpoetic essence of the writing.

Not every Instagram poem is fake, but most of them are caught up in the crazes of self-help and political correctness. The point is just to vent, not to discriminate, not to think hard about every word choice, not to be self-critical but just to celebrate the first thing that pops into your head — because you’re perfect just the way you are.

See, for example, “The Typewriter Daily,” in which the author routinely writes aphorisms which for some reason are mistaken for poems. Here’s one:

“It’s not selfish to wish to be loved, when you’ve been loving all along.”

Indeed, in her other “poems” which are really aphorisms, too, she repeatedly uses the word “love,” which should itself disqualify a piece of writing as a poem. After all, some words have been so overused that they’re singlehanded clichés. If you speak of love directly and unironically, you’re not being poetic. Similar lessons apply to almost every noun and verb in Gorman’s two poems; they’re all too abstract and prosaic to strike anyone as particularly creative.

Then there’s the queen of Instagram poetry, Rupi Kaur, who has over four million followers. Eschewing capitals and punctuation, she writes,

“nothing can replace how the women in my life make me feel”

So that’s a poem on Instagram. Here’s another:

“i am trusting the uncertainty and believing i will end up somewhere right and good”

Some of her poems are longer and slightly more creative, but you get the idea: this is cheap, feel-good, self-help advice being mistaken for poetry, that is, for a creative use of language. Again, some syntactic trappings and Kaur’s famous line art sketches that she pairs with the text take the place of actual poetic work, of the careful selection of words that avoids even a hint of abstraction or cliché.

That’s the hard part, you see, not the choice of font or the doodles or the elimination of capitals. To write poetry you must first become an enemy of the mob and of its tired, self-serving presuppositions. You must learn how to see the world as no one else sees it. You must look hard at what’s there and describe what you find with courage and skill.

When a piece of writing is too easily classified, when it falls so obviously under a nonartistic rubric such as under the happiness industry or, in Gorman’s case, the platitudes of political speechifying, you know in advance the author only insults her audience when she professes to have poetic intentions. To call such propaganda “art” or “poetry” is to drown out the higher calling.

These aren’t just non-poems; they’re anti-poems that do a disservice to the hard work of seeing the world poetically. Just as visual artists have a talent for seeing the particularities that nonartists ignore, whether those details be the various shades of green and yellow in a leaf or the negative spaces between a tree’s branches, a poet isn’t content with how we gloss over the contents of our daily experience with our perfunctory generalities.

Of course, Instagram is a visual medium so the emphasis there is on the packaging. The technology itself, therefore, is the culprit since it invites us to mistake the cherry on top for the whole ice cream sundae. Similarly, social media in general have become infamous for cheapening relationships and for degrading our social skills. Poetry is just one more in a long line of victims in our cultural infantilization.

The Dross and the Gold

You see, this criticism has nothing to do with Amanda Gorman’s age, skin color, or even her intentions which are none of my business. It can be uplifting to watch someone else succeed.

What’s galling, however, is how the mass celebration of her work indicates a disheartening level of collective ignorance. It’s as though the multitudes just decided one day to start eating sand. No reasons given, no defense possible — but with a forced smile they suddenly profess to prefer the taste of sand to real food. And who is some snob to remind them that sand isn’t edible, that sand and food are two different things?

Some readers may be thinking that poetry hasn’t disappeared from public view, after all, since it’s found throughout the lyrics of popular music, including rap music which features long, in-your-face streams of rhymes. Indeed, many of these lyrics and raps may count as poetic. Some rappers are known for being especially creative and intellectual, such as Aesop Rock.

But this popular form of poetry is consistent with the overall criticism since this isn’t poetry as such, but music. The poetry is like the pill that’s coated with sugar to be palatable because mass American and Americanized cultures have been debased.

Moreover, most lyricists and rappers focus on the rhymes rather than on trying to say something creative or profound. The more poetic a song’s words, the harder it is to listen to them in that form since the music becomes a distraction. For that reason, Aesop Rock’s cryptic and surreal rapping often goes over the heads of rap fans. But without the musical background, the shoddiness of most lyrics, which are often written in the minutes between the band’s drunken bacchanalias, would become all-too apparent.

In The Age of Atheists, the historian Peter Watson writes:

“The authority of poetry, the conviction with which it speaks, the unflinching accuracy with which it addresses the world, are part — even a large part — of the joy of living. It is part of the point of poetry to explore the limits of our world, and part of its achievement to transcend those limits. This is the best — and maybe the only — form of transcendence available.”

Watson quotes the poet Seamus Heaney’s explanation of poetry. A poem, Heaney says:

“Begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events and ends in a clarification of life — not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion…in its repose the poem gives us a premonition of harmonies desired and not inexpensively achieved. In this way, the order of art becomes an achievement intimating a possible order beyond itself, although its relation to that further order remains promissory rather than obligatory. Art is not an inferior reflection of some ordained heavenly system but a rehearsal of it in earthly terms; art does not trace the given map of a better reality but improvises an inspired sketch of it.

This is the higher calling for all artists which Gorman and the Instagram therapists appear not to have heard or taken seriously, judging from their output.

And what to make of the masses that mistake the lowest stand-ins for art for the highest artistic achievements? What does it mean when you start eating sand instead of food and are loath to admit to your baffling blunder?