Earlier in the semester, when engaging with the Writers in Baltimore Schools high school students, I wanted to share a poem with the group by a local young writer, Kema Flight, that contained profanity and sexual and physical abuse instances. Because the writer was local and focused on poetry and power simultaneously, I thought that sharing this poem would encompass these conversations. I also just wanted to spotlight a local writer whose poem greatly influenced and moved me. But because of the poem’s content, I was not sure if sharing it with a group of younger students would be appropriate in the specific setting that we were in – which is, in my mind, part academic and part creative. However, the two are not entirely mutually exclusive.

When I was in high school, I often hosted writers’ workshops for all students K-12, though most were in middle and high school. To offer this as an extracurricular, if I included certain pieces of fiction and poetry in our readings lists that had profanity and traumatic experiences, I needed to receive permission from parents to let the students read these works. The same went for writing: if a parent did not want their child writing a short story or poem that included things like profanity, abuse, sexuality, etc., I would have to monitor that student’s work and report anything that wasn’t “allowed” for that student if it came up. This happened more often than I would’ve liked – sure, students would not come to the workshop because the reading list that week included certain content that their parents did not want them to read, and some students expressed that they felt stifled or limited in what they wanted to the right.

I was wary of experiencing the same challenge with the WBS students, and of preventing any such difficulty, I reached out to Dora with this concern. I wanted to know if there was any level of appropriateness that we must adhere to with the group. I asked if we had a responsibility to share poetry that was “appropriate” (in whatever way “appropriate” is defined).
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Her response mentioned the use of Content Warnings as a helpful tool in facing this challenge. I was not familiar with Content Warnings when I was in high school, and the first time I heard of them was in an intro fiction and poetry course during my sophomore year in college. The presence of Content Warnings in writing – and in any form of media – exists to let an individual consume media that includes content that might illicit a potentially harmful and damaging emotional response. It thereby “warns,” as its name suggests, of its strong content to prepare a person for that content or deter them from viewing the media if they believe the potential emotional response will be too much for them. I don’t know if this would have been helpful for me back in high school, but it made me think of the way that censorship permeates creative and educational spaces for youth.

I am against censorship. There is a wealth of attainable knowledge in any media, even if its content is difficult to consume. I believe that the existence of Content Warnings is effective in preventing emotional harm for certain people of particular traumatic experiences. It serves as middle-ground between complete censorship of media and unfiltered media that may be harmful. Content Warnings also allow writers, artists, cinematographers, and the like to create media that they want to make without censorship, so long as they uphold responsibility for their work. That responsibility balances a very fine line where the existence of potentially harmful content is intended to either motivate or incite violence (like hate speech).

I do not believe in censoring, especially censoring youth, that uses poetry as a means of expression, especially if it is the only way that they are able or allowed to express themselves. We can use Content Warnings to curb any negative reactions when reading and writing our own work in creative spaces, and they can also help us to learn when certain language or images are warranted for the work we wish to complete.

However, that is not to say that parental concerns are invalid. I know for a fact that the parents of students I’ve taught were only concerned with the media their child(ren) may have been taking in and how it would affect them or how they would use them. It is unfair for me to dismiss their concerns over what I believe to be best for my students. Parents, of course, have the final say over what their children are allowed to read, but I think that, as educators, we should take it upon ourselves to educate them as much as we educate their children. We should show parents how abundant opportunities for self-expression without the limits of censorship come to benefit their children.

I got into a heated debate with my friend the other night. We were talking about poetry, and she pulled out her copy of Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur. I groaned. Flipping through the pages, I landed on a random poem in the book and explained why it was bad.

“It’s fake deep” I said. “She has nothing new or interesting to say. There are so many actually talented people. Why can’t we make them famous instead?”

I have to admit, this is not the first time I’ve lectured a friend about Rupi Kaur. I went into such a rage explaining Kaur’s work— her obvious trite sentences broken into lines to mimic poetry, the fake “deepness,” the disrespect towards ancient forms she claims to follow, the apparent lack of effort— that my friend donated her copy of Milk and Honey the next day. I felt triumphant.

Then I felt guilty. My friend had admitted to me that this was the only collection of poetry she’d ever enjoyed. Now that I have forced her to get rid of Milk and Honey, she wasn’t reading any poetry. I had berated and bashed the thing she loved and taken the enjoyment out of poetry, something that is supposed to be pleasurable and intimate to the person who is engaging with it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of bad poetry. In my first writing class my freshman year of high school, our teacher gave us a handout on what was “bad” and what was “good” poetry. She told us that our favorite series were badly written, when a poem we admired was actually bad, when our own work was bad. More than once, a student, myself included, came out of the classroom crying. Later, I became grateful that my teacher had been so harsh on me, because if she had coddled me, I would have been stuck writing bad poetry forever. I went back to my middle school and taught a lesson on ambiguity and vagueness, using the bad poetry handout. I wrote out a “bad,” cliched, vague version of “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver and put it side by side with the original to show the students how to tell the difference between good and bad poetry. To my surprise, they all preferred the “bad” one.  

For awhile, I’ve been thinking about The Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest held annually at Columbia, where participants write the worst poems they can come up with. The contest is based on a poem by Joyce Kilmer, called “Trees,” considered one of the worst poems ever written:
 
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
 
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
 
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
 
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
 
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
 
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
 
I also groaned the first time I read this poem. I rolled my eyes at its sentimentality, the cringe-worthiness of lines like, “sweet earth’s flowing breast,” and “intimately lives with rain,” the awkwardness of “upon whose bosom snow has lain,” the clichéd ending, “only God can make a tree.” However, I think it’s important to note that the first time I read “Trees,” it had been introduced to me as a bad poem. Reading it again, it’s not my cup of tea, but it is also not the worst poem I’ve ever read. I can see its merits— the careful meter, the seasons of a tree in anthropomorphic terms from infancy to old age, the humble assertion that poets are fools, trying to capture the astonishing natural world in words.

Because, when “Trees” first was published in 1913, it was a big hit. It made Joyce Kilmer famous. However, the age of modernism was beginning to take over, headed by Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and T.S. Eliot. They covered more complex, stark topics in free verse. Rhymed poems about God and Trees were overly sentimental. Perhaps Kilmer wrote his poem in the wrong time period. Perhaps if it had been released in the Romantic period of poetry, it would be greater appreciated.  

Criticism changes. Our idea of what is good changes. I haven’t changed my mind about Rupi Kaur. I still think there are poets who are more creative, who are doing new and interesting things and wrenching our heart strings at the same time, who go practically unnoticed outside the literary bubble, including some of my favorites: Rachel Zucker, Hala Alyan, and Aaron Smith, among many others. However, I want poetry to be accessible. Yes, I have studied writing in an academic setting for eight years, but I am not the gatekeeper of what is enjoyable to other people. I read poetry to be seen, to open myself to other perspectives. I write poetry because I want other people to feel less alone. If I am allowed to express myself; others should be allowed to do the same.

Another celebrity poet on the rise is Amanda Gorman, who I respect and admire greatly. She is a wonderfully talented writer, making a difference and making poetry more accessible to the masses. It is important to note that both Gorman, and the aforementioned Mary Oliver have been criticized for being “bad” poems. Critics have dismissed Oliver’s work as simplistic or too “inspirational.” More troubling is the criticism that Amanda Gorman has received, which has tended towards racism and belittlement. For example, her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” which was recited at the inauguration of Biden, has been dismissed by a critic from The Spectator, who picked apart the poems’ structure and grammar without any attempt to engage with the poets’ words and meanings.

​Literary criticism maintains literary norms. Book reviews, literary journals, publishers, editors, agents, writers’ conferences, writers’ magazines, arts councils, grant-making institutions, literary scholars, and professors of literature work to maintain these norms, holding up “literary” writing with “domestic” subject matters, and dismissing “genre” or “minority or special interest” subject matter. For too long, poetry has been in the hands of literary snobs who enjoy being accessible only to the educated elite. It’s time for us to change the narrative.
 
 
For further reading:
 
https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/the-worst-bad-poem-in-the-world--its-a-competition-20181119-h18297
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/mary-oliver-did-something-rare-she-made-poetry-accessible-thats-not-a-bad-thing/2019/01/18/6aacf3ee-1b2d-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html
 
Graves, Robert. “What Is Bad Poetry?” The North American Review, vol. 218, no. 814, 1923, pp. 353–368. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25113107.
 
Fleece, Jeffrey. “Further Notes on a ‘Bad’ Poem.” College English, vol. 12, no. 6, 1951, pp. 314–320. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/371696.
 
Kearns, Rosalie Morales. “Voice of Authority: Theorizing Creative Writing Pedagogy.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 60, no. 4, 2009, pp. 790–807. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40593430. Accessed 12 Mar. 2021.
 
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/01/opinions/amanda-gorman-summons-phillis-wheatley-sinha/index.html

 I’ve always been interested in verbalizing the unsaid. We are living in a world where visual cues, design, pictures, and art control a chunk, if not all, thought processes and behavior patterns. We document memories by taking photos on a phone or camera, we entertain ourselves by watching visual shows, we study and make sense of concepts through diagrams, drawings, and presentations. For the average person, these simple activities don’t require a second thought; however, I have always been curious about how much people, society, the world is actually affected through these visual and graphic cues. It makes me wonder: what would the world be like without photos and art? How would we be able to tell the difference between specific concepts or ideas? Why do people tend to ignore the efforts of photographers and artists when it is so embedded in our lives? And most importantly, I become fascinated with how visuals might aid storytelling: What more can a single photo, diagram, drawing convey beyond the visual element? What is the background story behind it? Who is involved? What happened afterwards? Why did this happen? Why was it created? These pondering questions and thoughts have been with me ever since I could lift a pencil and draw pictures or write. I think as a Writing Seminars major, double minoring in visual arts and marketing/communications, I can’t help but try to process graphic cues (i.e. advertisements, fine art, photography, or even logos/typography) and attempt to uncover hidden meanings through imagery, streams of consciousness, and most importantly, poetry. 

An interesting form of verbalizing graphic cues is actually “Photopoetry.” I became intrigued with this type of poetry after researching about ekphrastic poems and wondering: “If I can write poems for pieces of art—why not photographs, too?” In addition, I was taking a photography class this semester, so I was naturally inclined to weave some sort of connection between the two subjects that I was most passionate about—writing and art. After some research about photopoetry—or its various alternatives, “photopoeme, photometry, photoverse, photo-grafitti, etc”—I learned that it’s an art form to describe that the poem and photograph hold equal importance to each other and often are symbiotically related (Photo Pedagogy). Michael Nott, author of Photopoetry 1845-2015, a Critical History, says, “the relationship between poem and photograph has always been one of disruption and serendipity, appropriation and exchange, evocation and metaphor the relationship between poem and photograph has always been one of disruption and serendipity, appropriation and exchange, evocation and metaphor.” A brief historical analysis of the relationship between photographs and poems illustrate its emergence during the Victorian period. The term “photopoem” was first coined in Constance Philips’ Photopoems: A Group of Interpretations through Photographs (1936). The pairing between photographs and poems were relatively popular as both mediums were able to rely on each other for deeper meaning and storytelling. Even more, a blend of these two art forms become so coherent that it forces the viewer to enter a sort of “montage thinking”—montages of text and image draw our attention to the act of reading/thinking, thus the reader/viewer becomes a collaborator in the creation of meaning (Michael Nott, Photopoetry 1845-2015). Photopoetry also creates a new level of social engagement because viewers are not only participating in “montage thinking,” but the very act of taking photos of people or places involves communicating and “engaging” with society, per say. The moments, events, people captured in the photos at the specific time—one wonders what’s happening and who’s in the picture. And to be able to complement a poem with the very act of photography is a type of social engagement that I would say is underrated, yet could open doors to new styles of poetry, or even beyond the creative arts. 

I don’t necessarily want this blog post to be a history lesson about photopoetry, but rather a discussion about my findings and new knowledge about an art form that I was unfamiliar with. In addition, I actually wanted to test out the actual form of photopoetry by giving it a go myself! 

I came across this photograph while browsing for wallpaper backgrounds actually—but it immediately caught my attention because of the subject’s silhouette. I don’t know who the person is in the photo, but the angle of it definitely draws my eye to the sky, essentially doing the same action as the subject, or person—“looking up at the sky.” Along with the dark quality and heavy contrast of the black ground, silhouette, and the bright stars in the sky had me pondering—could there be something more that this photo could say? And I guess you could say those questions ended up leading me to this poem below: 

TO LIVE
     by Gina Kim 

Cold, dark, 
                    scary. 

Drowning 
In an endless black void 
To abyss. 

Tears that fill Niagara Falls, 
Soundless screams echo as 
I fall further down like I’m buried 
                                        Alive. 

Cold, dark, 
                    scary. 

I fall like Niagara Falls 
Until I hear a voice inside of me 
                                       “Open your eyes” 

I look up 
To see warm, bright, stars 
Shining at me. Hope. 
                                       To live. 

Overall, I thought the activity of actually trying to test out my research and findings was quite satisfying. I was able to put into action and actually create deeper meaning by aiding a photograph with a poem. It was a different experience for me as I was only able to do that for art pieces and drawings for ekphrastic poetry. Furthermore, engaging with poetry with photography was definitely a new level of If you haven’t yet tried to take a second thought and think about the hidden meaning behind your favorite work of art, or maybe an old photograph that you took and sort of forgot the reason why you took it, I would highly suggest sitting down for 20 minutes and just let your mind ponder, guide your thoughts, and write.