The Faults of Poetry in This Day and Age
Transcriber: Hendel Shimizu
Reviewer: Amanda Zhu
“I pace around trying to remember
that last line, that poem I wrote,
but then the memories begin to drown
and nonchalant cases begin to float.
Forget me, for I am
but a figment of your memory,
conflicted to trade a daring person.
I will not admit this but the memories.
I am the vault
that holds things so sacred.
But my brain was
like the guard with reverie.
Forget me, for I am
but a figment of your memory.
Resisting is only
a regretful word for remorse.
Again, my friend, we must make amends,
but I the wind cannot speak,
so I ask the trees
for a warning to be sent.
Forget me, for I am
but a figment of your memory.
I am the history of tomorrow.
But the history of mine was yesterday.
How oft do I lose a memory of mine?
Washed on shore, a seashell yells my name.
Forget me, for I am
but a figment of your memory.”
These are the first
four stanzas that I wrote
shortly after my mom arrived
from her pilgrimage to Mecca.
She told me that while she was there,
she was so entranced by the purity
and holiness of the place
that she blurted out a four-line stanza
and kept on repeating it.
When she had arrived home,
she had only remembered two,
and a week later she had forgotten it all.
It wouldn’t have hurt her
to write it down.
But oh well.
Now, I could go on and explain
what this poem truly means.
But I think the beauty of poetry is found
when trying to analyze it yourself.
I could, however,
go through the literary elements,
such as the personification
of seashell yelling my name,
and so on and so forth.
Yet with all of these literary elements,
I would not call this a good poem
unless it invoked something bigger.
Poetry isn’t good because it’s complex.
It isn’t good because it’s simple.
Take Dr. Seuss’s poetry.
He makes poetry that is aimed
specifically for kids.
But why would I call his work poetry
and not any other work
that I find on the Internet?
It’s because despite
the crazy words he comes up with,
like the “thingamajig”
or the abstract ideas that he makes,
like The Cat in the Hat,
he still gives some leeway
for children to explore
what these things actually mean
or how they act like.
And in the case of The Cat in the Hat,
it could even symbolize something bigger,
such as disobedience.
But what does modern poetry
look like today?
It’s very noticeable
that our medium for exchanging poetry
has drastically changed.
Back then,
if you wanted to publish a poem,
you would get rejected
from every editor every single time.
And on the bright chance
that one editor accepts you,
the best case scenario
is that you’re going to have your poem
in a small column in the newspaper
or in one page of a poetry book.
Nowadays you can publish poems
with one click of a button
and so people can post
what they want right away
without giving it a second thought.
And on the other hand,
the users of these social media platforms
are mindlessly scrolling
through this platform.
And so, when they go there,
they go there for a place
of entertainment,
a place of escape.
And if they see something too complex,
they will most likely skip it.
So poets naturally
have to accommodate to this.
And what they do
is that they make their poetry
short, concise and straight forward.
Let me give you this example.
“I sat by the curb as it rained,
thinking about all my pain.”
Here, it has rhyme,
it has rhythm, it has imagery,
it has good literary elements.
Yet it is too straightforward
yet too vague at the same time.
And I know those two sound
like antonyms, right?
But the straightforwardness
comes in the essence of the situation
where it is as simple
as somebody sitting by the curb
as it rain
thinking about all of their pain.
The vagueness comes in the word “pain.”
The poets might have written this poem
with the intention of speaking
about the pain of grieving a loved one.
But you, on the other hand,
might be interpreting it as the pain
of losing maybe half a mark on a test.
And so this vagueness
allows a factor of relatability
and the relatability
makes this poem seem more appealing.
In fact, it is something
as simple as it could ever be.
And here, it isn’t that unique,
it isn’t that original,
and it makes you feel like the poem
is deeper than what it already is.
And when a poem looks deeper
than what it actually is,
we call this phenomena “fake deep poetry.”
What is fake deep poetry?
It is, as the name suggests,
something that looks deep,
but once you take a closer look,
it really isn’t.
And so it has been popping up
a lot recently
with the constant namedropping
of serious issues.
Some poets think
that if they namedrop issues,
it will look more brave,
but in fact,
it just makes their poems weaker.
So let me give you this example.
This poet has troubles with their father.
So this poet writes,
“My father, he is never proud.
To this day, he has not said it aloud.”
And here, yeah, again,
it’s rhymed and it has rhythm,
but it is almost the complete opposite
of my previous example.
It is too straightforward.
But what if I reword it?
What if I said,
“I want to give you the satisfaction
of a million critiques.
I want to rise from the lowest low
and reach the standard
that you call the peak”?
Here, not only is it
more open to interpretation
but it keeps the initial goal of the poet
while also making others
empathize with the situation.
Back then, in the previous example,
it was only narrow
to a certain group of people
who have went through the circumstance.
But the beauty of language
is to make people empathize,
to make people feel something
that they have never experienced.
This begs an even bigger question:
How did we get to poetry today?
It is as simple as it could ever be -
labeling.
Poetry is such an open form of art
that anything can constitute
for a poem these days.
In fact, there’s a type of poetry
called contemporary poetry
in which it asks you to make poetry
that does not sound like poetry.
Try saying that 10 times fast.
And so nowadays anything
will be labeled as a poem.
Some people will write advice,
dialogue or experiences
and label them as poetry
when they could be channeling
this energy into making memoirs,
advice books, or even young adult novels.
I mean, celebrities come out
with more poetry books
than Martha Stewart
comes out with cookbooks.
And trust me, she makes a lot.
Let me tell you this good poem
that I heard recently.
Listen to this.
“Actual poetry.
Listen to my story.
Stay to watch the way.
Let the ages play.
We to the young men
speak these words again.”
It sounds so beautiful,
so raw, so original.
Want to know who the author is?
Artificial intelligence.
Is it so original anymore?
I don’t think so.
Poetry is so unique that it is considered
as another Turing test.
And the Turing test is basically a test
to see if artificial intelligenc
has reached human intelligence.
And so if poetry is brought upon a person
and a person cannot identify
that an AI wrote this,
then artificial intelligence
will be deemed as intelligent as us.
If we keep mislabeling things,
then we might as well say
that AI is as intelligent as us.
But you may be asking,
“Zahraa, who are you to critique poetry?
Isn’t poetry subjective? ”
Well, brace yourselves.
I’m about to hit you with a hard truth.
It is not.
Poetry is not subjective.
Think about it.
If poetry was subjective,
why would we go to school every day
and learn and read literature from before?
Why do we take upon ourselves
English majors that criticize
and tell us the elements of literature
that tell us what’s good
and tell us what’s bad?
It’s so that we can channel
all this energy into our own work
and make our work that much better.
It’s OK, I won’t judge
your taste of poetry.
You may like bad poetry
and hates good poetry.
I am not here to judge you,
but your preference does not change
the fact of whether this poem is good
or whether this poem is bad.
And here I will complete the final stanza
of that poem I wrote earlier.
“And I too frail to answer the call,
look into my head for a rejoiced symphony.
And although the record player
may be broken,
I’ll hear new sounds blissfully.
Forgive me, for I, the poem
and this last line are …”
Ellipses.
Incomplete.
I left the poem open
to insert you into my narrative.
That’s the beauty of poetry.
It truly is.
Let me tell you one of the greatest poems
I’ve actually heard,
and trust me, it’s not written by AI,
I’m not tricking you again.
It was as simple as it could ever be -
four letters, two words, one space -
recited by the greatest Muhammad Ali.
It was “Me we”.
Now what does “Me we” mean?
It has no meaning,
because you are the one
that will input meaning into it.
You will identify what it means.
Muhammad Ali, he never
told us what it meant.
He left it open for us.
This change starts with “me”
and then it ends with “we.”
Should I forget about “me”
and focus on the “we.”
The opportunities are endless.
What is so great about poetry
and this magnificent art
is that it invokes -
better yet, it incites - emotion
and it instills thought.
And poetry might not have
a definitive meaning.
But one thing is true.
Poetry is a form of art that involves you.
Thank you for listening to my TEDxTalk.
(Applauses)