Hi! Welcome back to another booktube
video. Today I'm going to talk about
recent Goodreads Choice Award winners
for poetry. So I tried to read the last
five years of winners but the 2015
winner, The Dogs I Have Kissed by Trista
Mateer was not in my library consortium.
None of the libraries near me owned it
and quite frankly if the other four I
read or any indication, I don't want to
buy any of the Goodreads Choice Award
winners for poetry, probably. But I'll get
into that. I did however read four of the
recent winners. The Witch Doesn't Burn in
This One by Amanda Lovelace, that was
2018. The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur,
2017. The Princess Saves Herself in This One, 2016 also by Amanda Lovelace, and
Lullabies by Lang Leav, 2014. Now, I
made this video for a very specific
purpose its partly in response to a very
small section of a video by paperback
dreams, my favorite booktuber, about
reading all of the 2018 Choice Award
Winners. And so doing that she read The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One, and she
talked about how she didn't really like
it. I agree with everything she said. She
said that the content, in terms of like
the messages, were good but the style didn't
really do anything for her. And she made
a lot of little caveats or disclaimers
saying basically, like, well poetry is not
really my thing and modern poetry is not
really my thing so maybe this just isn't
for me. And she was really nice about it.
Which is fair. If I were to review a
genre that I don't really read, I tend to
not be too critical because hey what do
I know. But as someone who does read a
lot of poetry I would say, first of all,
it saddens me to think of anybody
reading any of these books and thinking
that this is modern poetry, this is
the poetry that's happening right now.
That it's the only kind of poetry that's
happening right now. Because this is not
even to the majority of the poetry
that's being published right now. It
is the most popular and most
commercially successful. It's what you'll
find in Barnes & Noble. It's what a
family member who doesn't know you very
well might buy you for Christmas. It's
not modern poetry. And so I just wanted
to talk about these books and why
they're not good. So I want to start by
reading from The Princess Saves Herself
In This One. This is an Amanda Lovelace
book and there's a poem in here that
really stuck out to me. Again, talking
about the definition of poetry and I'll
just read it. There's a poem page 163. "One.
fill-in-the-blank.
poetry is- blank - anything you want it
to be." This is her sort of formula, her
forma, the title, I guess you would
call it a title, is at the end. which is
something that Rupi Kaur also does. I
don't know who did it first. I don't know whose
idea this is. It's just a thing that is
happening right now. So yeah. That's a
sentiment that I can feel in all of
these books- that poetry is just whatever
you want it to be. And that is something
that bothers me and has bothered me for
a long time. I feel like a definition of
poetry need not be poetic. Definitions
are utilitarian. Definitions are useful.
They are meant to help people understand
what a word means and how it's used. And to
me poetry has a pretty specific
definition. I would define it as a work
of art in language, either written or
spoken, that conveys a feeling or an idea
through poetic techniques, in other words
alliteration, assonance, consonance,
similes, metaphors, form, rhythm, rhyme,
meter, etc. That is my definition of
poetry and I think it's a good one. And
these people are not writing that. It's
just- they just aren't. This is just not
poetry and I know maybe that sounds
extremely elitist or unfair but I think
that most... I would say most readers and
writers of poetry would probably agree.
So let me also start by saying that,
okay, so obviously this book has been
talked about a lot. Rupi Kaur has been
talked about a lot. One of my first
introductions to this book was a
co-worker of mine saying that someone
bought this for her for a gift and she
doesn't like poetry but she liked this.
And my first thought was, well yeah,
because it's not poetry. I can see
someone who doesn't like poetry liking
this. You know. Writing a sentence of
prose where you occasionally hit enter
is not poetry. That's just a sentence.
okay let's get into it. I'm sorry this is
not very- five whole minutes of sort of
disclaimer and explanation. I can
actually talk about these books now. I
have notes, okay?
This is not just me out here complaining.
I really put some time into this. this took a
long time. So the first book I read for
this was the most recent
winner, The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One by
Amanda Lovelace. Of these three poets:
Amanda Lovelace, Rupi Kaur, and Lang Leav.
It dlisliked Amanda Lovelace the
most. Again, my personal definition of
poetry is just different than hers. I
think poetry needs to utilize a fair
amount of poetic devices. As far as I can
tell Lovelace pretty much only uses
alliteration. She uses some imagery but
the imagery is pretty much always just
fire. Fire, matches, match boys, match
sticks. Fire. It gets pretty repetitive.
She uses a lot of hyphenated phrases like
that wouldn't normally be hyphenated
like you take two words you stick em
together and you put hyphen in between
them. She does a lot of like this kind of
thing...you know spaces between words. I
don't really understand what this is
supposed to do for the way that you read
it. It kind of emphasizes the word I
guess but it is grossly overused first
of all and I just don't understand what
it's supposed to do. The line breaks
where you know if you don't read poetry, or you don't know, you know it's
exactly what it sounds like,
you write a line then you hit
Enter or (make a) space with your hand and that's
the line break. The line breaks in this
collection and most of these collections
feel, with the exception of Lang Leav.
feel completely random. Completely random.
I can't see any reason and what that
does really is as you read these poems
they feel like sentences, just prose
sentences, but they're harder to read
because there are these random breaks
that have no purpose and no point and
they just kind of slow you down and I
don't understand why, why especially
Amanda Lovelace who really heavily
relies on line breaks and doing funky
things with spaces, and without space
nothing about this is poetic. I don't
understand why she doesn't just write
prose poetry. But the thing is if she
wrote prose poetry every poem would be
like two lines long. Maybe a little
longer than that. They would be super
short. They would be too short. I think
that's the only reason why she uses line
breaks like this. Okay.
Trying to be coherent here, okay. I got
like halfway through this book and I
started feeling like, wow, these feel like
tweets. They feel precisely like
something I would read on Twitter and
content-wise
I agree with a lot of the stuff
she's saying. These are pretty much all
very like feminist collections of poetry with positive things to say about body image
and just feminist stuff. She tries to be
intersectional. I don't actually think
she succeeds in that but that's kind of
another story for another day. But in any
case content-wise like it's okay, you
know, I don't disagree with anything
she's saying. I just don't think it
needed to be a book. Because it feels
like Twitter. So and then I get to this
poem, page 99, which I will read for you.
Here we go, first actual reading of one
of the poems. "Quote, I don't wear makeup
for others the same way I don't decorate
my house for others. This is my home and
everything I do is for me," and again, what  I would call the title at the botton,
"- tweet from September 28 2016." tTis is a
tweet. She published a tweet in her book.
of poetry. Which , if what you had
written was a poem, if you tweeted was a poem
and you wanted to put it in your book
that's fine. That didn't feel like a poem
to me it felt like a tweet. Okay. All
right. Here we go.
Another thing. By the time I got to the
end of this book, and this is one of two
Amanda Lovelace books that I had to read
for this video, I had a theory. I thought
to myself, with no...I knew nothing about
this person or these books other than
the fact that they were Goodreads Choice
Award winners and that paperbackdreams
read one of them. I didn't know anything
about this before I got into it. I read
this book and I thought, there is no way
that this person was not originally
self-published. That is just a thing that
you can tell from reading this. Take that
for what it is, you know, you can decide
that that's elitist of me and unfair but
you read this and you know, if you know
anything about poetry, you write poetry,
if you submit to publishers especially,
you know that this did not get published
by any publisher, small press, or contest. You know that from reading it. Now, I did
a little research. That was just a theory.
I looked into it and this one came first,
,and I believe this was self-published
and then this... once you have
some success in self-publishing you can
publish through a publisher. But still, even the
second collection which supposedly I
would think went through some editors or
something, you could totally 100 percent tell that this is a self-published poet.
So take that for whatever you want. You can tell me that I'm elitist.
But I can tell that this did not pass
the muster through any kind of like
workshop. Because it wouldn't. It would
not. Okay page 49. I need to talk about
this poem as well. "And she begins to
wonder if kisses have calories and how
long they would take to burn -the hollow
girl two." What?! Okay if you want to talk
about eating disorders, by all means
 let's talk about it. That's
an important topic. I don't think anybody with an eating
disorder genuinely thinks to themself, 
I wonder if kisses have kisses have
calories? Kisses *burn* calories and honestly I think anyone
with an eating disorder knows that
I just- what? It just doesn't make any sense. How does this? Okay. I'm sorry I'm not
doing a very good job being coherent.
That's insane. I cannot believe that that
got published. Okay this is the last full
poem we're going to talk about. Page 27.
"Women are considered to be possessions
before we are ever considered to be
human beings and if our doors and our
windows are ever smashed in by wicked
men, then we are deemed worthless, foreclosed, never sold. So we move out of our
neighborhoods and we make sister homes
of each other. We lock those doors and
eat those keys." First of all- she uses the
word sister and sisterhood, she talks about
sisterhood a lot. I feel like...Is this the
90s? no. What are you doing?
I don't...sisterhood is a kind of
problematic notion especially for white
women. But that's not what I was
primarily going to I talk about. So, in a good
poem in my experience, good poems are
both beautiful and logical and the more
you read them the more they make sense
and the more you can see that every
single word was chosen carefully and
every line break has purpose and it all
just fits together like a puzzle and
it's beautiful and it makes sense. The
more you read these poems the more you
realize that they do not make sense. Okay.
"Women are considered to be possessions
before ever considered human beings." Sure.
"and if our doors and our windows," okay
now women are houses, okay, "are ever
smashed in by wicked men," men are
breaking the houses, "then we are deemed
worthless, foreclosed." So you're upset
that you don't get sold? You're
complaining that you're a possession and
then you're complaining that you don't
get sold. "So we move out of our
neighborhoods." I thought you were a house,
now you're a person? "and we make sister
homes of each other," Now you're a house
inside a house inside a house? What is and 
happening? "and we lock those doors and
eat those keys." Oh my god. locks and keys I just. That is
such a cliche. That is such a cliche.
Anyway. So it doesn't actually make any
sense, is another thing. Oh boy here we go. Do I seem ridiculous? Do I seem mean?
It doesn't matter these people are doing
fine. That's the thing I can sit here and
criticize them. They're all making money
so I don't have a problem with telling
you that they're bad. Because they are. So
okay let's talk about positives. I'm
never gonna review any book without
saying anything good about it.
Content-wise what she is trying to say,
sometimes I think she fails at saying it,
but she was clearly trying to say
feminist empowering things, again she
makes attempts at intersectionality but
I don't really think they work, but she
is trying to be an intersectional,
empowering, inclusive feminist, that's
cool I like that.
The Sun and Her Flowers, have you ever heard of it? I bet you have.
yeah okay again this is the one that
somebody said, "I don't really like poetry
but I like this. Sure. I like poetry so I
don't like this." Much like The Witch
Doesn't Burn, we've got 
metaphorical descriptions of women as
houses, bodies as houses, smashed windows.
we're locking doors we're swallowing
keys. What? okay. Other cliches in this. She
said belly of the beast,
packed like sardines. Poetry is
supposed to use- not supposed to- can use
little similes and metaphors, comparisons.
"Packed like sardines" is a is a cliche so
I don't really know why you're using it
in your poetry. Poetry
allows you to be very unique and
downright weird and original and I think
it's especially important in poetry to
do something different and say something
in a way that it hadn't been said
before. Because almost all of these
collections are about the same stuff.
They're about falling in love and
falling out of love and a lot of them
have these very feminist concerns so
you're not saying anything that no one else is saying, you have
to say it in an interesting way. I am
just baffled by the number of downright
known cliches in this book. I was about
eight years old when my first teacher
taught me to not write cliches Thank You
Mrs. Longabardi.
I don't understand. So that was just
really baffling okay. Rupi Kaur is more
what I would call like like greeting
card poetry. Here's a poem, page 89. "Like
the rainbow after the rain joy will
reveal itself after sorrow." oh and we
have a drawing. okay. This is a lovely
greeting card this is lovely, nice
greeting card this is a nice little
consolation...this is a nice
why am I forgetting the word? Condolence
card or something. This is a greeting
card. That's fine. Write greeting
cards. You can make money doing that.
I actually don't have that much to say
about this one even though it's like the
big one I think in my experience. Front facing in every Barnes and Noble
in the country. I don't understand. I will once again say some positive
things about this book. We've got nice
little drawings, some of these would make
a really nice like tattoo or something.
they're cute.
alright or once again would make a nice
like greeting card. That's nice. I like
that. I like that drawings. I
just wanna show you some more drawings
I like the drawings they're cute, nice,
look at all those little vegetables in a pattern.
nice drawings. Now we need to talk
about plagiarism
did you know what this video would also
be about plagiarism? If you know anything
about this book, if you know
anything about this poet, you know that
she is entangled in a scandal of
plagiarism. So we need to talk about that.
So I have read every article I could
find on the accusations of plagiarism
against Rupi Kaur they're not very good
articles, t's very like gossipy in the
poetry world. Haven't found anything
super substantive but I'm still going to
talk about it. One of the issues is that
a specific poet Nayirah Waheed, accused
Rupi Kaur of- well I'll just read
what this poet said because that will be
better and more accurate. So Waheed wrote,
publicly, the following: "loves, it is with
a truly heavy heart I feel it is now
time that I must come on public record
with a statement regarding the author
Rupi Koaur and the growing unrest in our
community regarding issues of plagiarism,
paraphrasing, and hyper similarity. In
December 2014 I did professionally and
privately address this author via email
concerning issues of extreme hyper
similarity regarding my work. I addressed
this among other concerns with the
author in the hopes that upon awareness
on their part efforts be made to cease
and desist. In this correspondence I
expressed my upset, my growing discomfort,
my disappointment and disbelief that as
I had extended ...[sic] and
professional acquaintanceship to them, a
welcoming, a general trust artist to artist,
woman of color writer to fellow woman of
color writer, that that trust felt it had
been violated and that boundaries were
being crossed. It was also very hurtful
and confusing because this author has
expressed on social media and in
professional interviews that I am one of
their main woman of color writing
inspirations and I truly thought that
they valued and respected my work myself
and the work I do and I feel that I have
been utterly blindsided. Okay. I do think
is unacceptable for someone to send you
 
Okay.
I do think it is unacceptable, for someone to send you a message like that and to not respond.
 
 
But what I think is actually more
compelling and impressive is this
breakdown of similarity to not only this
one contemporary poet but other contemporary poets and very
very famous classic poets. as well. And
so I'm gonna link to this Goodreads
review because I think this Goodreads
review from just a reader was actually
more compelling and well researched and
interesting than any of the articles
that I read. So good job that person.
And that person said the following. I'm
not gonna read their entire Goodreads
review but I'll read some of it. She said, "I
don't know where to begin. Listen as a
brown girl of course I gave Rupi a try.
That's what we Brown girls do, we hold
each other up and support each other
like crazy because who else will?"
I want to point out yeah I'm not
trying to tear down a woman of
color poet, but she [her writing] is bad and she
plagiarized. So I'm not going to not talk
about it. Especially in this roundup
where I'm not just talking about her. it's a wider issue. Snyway she
goes on and then she says, "I just can't
ignore the more popular pieces she has
claimed as her own when any avid reader
can tell you they're not." um I don't
think any avid reader can tell this I
think this person is being modest
because I mean  maybe I'm
not well-read enough but I would not
have been able to remember these
specific verses and I'm really impressed
by this person. So let's just get into
some of the examples that she cites.
example one, this is a quote from Rupi Kaur, "you must see no worth in yourself
if you find me worth less after you've
touched me as if your hands on my body
magnify you and reduced me to nothing."
sounds awfully familiar to this quote
from Kaija Sabbah: "if you consider a woman
less pure after you've touched her maybe
you should take a look at your hands."
example two "she was music but he had his
ears cut off," Rupi Kaur. "she was like a
piano in a country where everyone has
had their hands cut off," Angela Carter.
here's another example, "your voice does to
me what autumn does to trees you call to say hello and my
clothes fall naturally," Rupi Kuar. "I want
to do with you what spring does with the
cherry trees" Pablo Neruda. Are you
kidding me? Now we can argue forever
about whether this is intentional,
whether this is known, whether
maybe Rupi Kaur reads a lot of poetry and
can't remember where her ideas come from,
that happens, it happens to all of us I
can understand that. I think that the
number of similarities with the number
of poets is entirely suspicious, however,
what I think is more important than any
of that is that in every single case the
original is better. There's not a single
example of Rupi Kaur stealing it and making it
better. So my question is just why would
you read this? When you could go read
Pablo Neruda or one of those other
people.
go read Angela Carter go read somebody. This is the
watered-down version of poetry. That's two of the four
books that I intended to talk about. This
videos getting a lot longer and meaner
than I meant it to be i mmm... I thought
this would be fun and light-hearted but
I guess I actually feel very strongly
about this and this is making me kind of
Angry. But we'll keep going. I'm really
worried I'm being too mean.
Once again, all these people
have more money than I do so I don't
really care. Or, they've
made more money off of their
writing, let's be specific. Again I
had to read another Amanda Lovelace oh
my god. Once again she uses the phrase
"key to my heart." I just don't understand
how fully grown adult writers are using
known cliches. Since this was the
second Amanda Lovelace book that I read
I didn't take nearly as many notes. I
just wanted to get through it. You
know, I had taken extensive notes on the
first one. Once again the content is
fine, the form is boring. It reminds me of
like bathroom stall inspiration. If you
go into a lot of women's bathrooms,
there will be, for those of you who maybe
have not been in women's bathroom,
often the graffiti is very inspirational.
And it says things like you're beautiful!
you're worth it! you're wonderful! And I'm
like you don't know me I could be a
serial killer. I don't understand this.
I'm just trying to pee. That's what it
feels like to read this kind of stuff.
I appreciate wanting to uplift people it
just doesn't do anything for me. yeah
the only good thing about it is it's
short. Okay finally this one. lesser-known
I feel lot is talked about. Lang Leav.
she must be popular if she won a
Goodreads Choice Award but you know
certainly not making headlines for
plagiarism like some people in this
video. Once again like all four of
these books I feel like I'm reading a
diary. I'm reading somebody's diary. This
book is entirely about falling in love
and falling out of love that is the
whole thing. Now unlike especially  Lovelace and mostly unlike Kaur,
Lang uses at least some variation
of style. Some of these are prose poems.
cool. She's not entirely relying on
completely random line breaks for it to
be poetry. Some of them rhyme and have
some meter. Okay cool we're doing some
poetry stuff that's nice. So yeah
unlike the others there especially unlike
Lovelace there's some variation in
style.
There's however no variation in content.
Like I said half the books about falling
in love half the books about falling out of love.
oh my god it got so boring. You have to
make me care much like in fiction I have
to care about the characters I have to
care about we were saying. In poetry you
can do that through language, through
doing something interesting with
language. This- I don't care about your
diary about your breakup. I just don't.
You have to make me care.
This one didn't make me like actively
angry I was just bored. It's not that bad
it's not it's fine. It's fine.
It didn't make me angry, like this
one does because hey you can't just copy people
without giving them credit. I also
forgot to mention you'll notice that no
one is complaining about her drawings
even though in many occasions she is
drawing on specific inspiration and she
will say  this is inspired by
this painting or a photograph or
whatever. Yah if you give credit no one
will get mad it's that simple
okay? Cite your sources. So yeah
that's all for them.
my goodness I'm starting to feel like
maybe I shouldn't put this on the
Internet. Is it too mean? Tell me if I'm
being too mean. Tell me. That's the
end of talking about bad poetry.
Now you could ask yourself, I just spent
like 20 minutes ranting about what's bad
and what I don't like so what do I like?
do I like anything? Do I like things? Yes
I like poetry a lot here's my bookshelf.
I'm gonna do a bookshelf tour soon but
this is all poetry. It's not
extensive I have more than this. I read a
lot of poetry and I
will link my my own personal Goodreads
account so you can go and you can look
at it if you care but I'm just going to
list my top favorite poets in no
particular order so you know that I
don't just hate everybody
These are all contemporary poet.  I
believe everybody on this list as far as
I know it's still alive and
they're writing right now. So this is-
these are modern poets okay? So once
again these guys are not the be-all and
end-all and all there is to modern
poetry. So here's some good modern poets
okay Eve Ewing, Rachel Zucker Kaveh Akbar,
Terrence Hayes, Anna Moschovakis,
Heather Christle, Tracy K Smith, Louise
Gluck, Jennifer Joshua Espinosa, Aracelis Girmay,
Arda Collins, Chen Chen. You
can go check any of them out they're all
wonderful and great
and you know what I would bet money but
they don't like these books either. So
I'm not just being salty. Anyway
that is all for now. Please let me know
how you felt about this because I'm not
sure how I feel about it. Tell me if I'm
being too mean. Tell me if you'd like me
to be mean some more in the future okay
all right bye.
