jouissance @de-bra - Tumblr Blog

Jonas Wood (American, b. 1977), Momo with Stuffed Animals, 2011. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 72 ¼ x 72 in.

Jean-Michel Basquiat | Bronze

titled and dated OCT 82 on the reverse acrylic, gold paint and oil stick on canvas 152.5 by 152.5 cm. 60 by 60 in.

Bronze is an icon of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s oeuvre; a rarefied painting of measured compositional concision and devastating graphic impact. Searing in its intensity, this work explicates the importance of West African cultural precedent to Basquiat’s inimitable style, and the influence he gleaned from the entire spectrum of art history – from the ancient to the contemporary. source sothebys

captainsnoop-deactivated2020041

x-men’s inherent flaw in its storytelling is that it always has mutants with useful powers telling mutants with actual curses to be proud of their powers

“you should embrace your gifts” says Orgasm Dude, the dude with the power to give anyone an orgasm

“yeah thanks” says Will Explode If He Gets A Boner Man

woodrider

realgarn

I’m seeing a lot of talk on Rupi Kaur and it’s something I’ve been thinking about for several months now. Here are my thoughts.

I don’t ever assert my artistic opinions as universal - I’m not here to comment on people enjoying her poetry - but that Rupi managed to very obviously plagiarize Nayyirah, disrespect Nayyirah in the confrontation process, and then continue her business and collect acclamation while her poetry doesn’t compare to many big ‘internet’ poets let alone WOC poets outside of the blogosphere (in depth, complexity, or form)….is frustrating.

There is such thing as artistic simplicity but the simplicity of Rupi’s poems doesn’t concern me - you can achieve minimalism and emotional weight (and avoid plagiarism). Rupi’s tone, rhythm, meter, and vocabulary - let alone sense of sincerity or sense of deliberation or fundamental things like line breaks - are exceptionally limited and disjointed, and her book is not uniform (suggesting that this limit isn’t intentional). Meanwhile, much of her good syntax and specific imagery is lifted from poets like Nayyirah and Warsan.

And yet: my local B&N has at least 30 copes of “milk and honey” while it carries max 2 copies of any other poet, including classics. She’s a bestseller. I don’t know how but Rupi Kaur somehow surpassed the phenomenon of white mediocrity in poetry (possibly through tokenization + manipulation of online spaces) to promote woc mediocrity, and as a woc poet/artist I Can’t Abide.

There are amazing immigrant/diasporic poets out there (especially q/tpoc and Black women poets) writing on the same subjects but with, like, degrees for which they labored and labored to pay, and/or drawing from specific suffering & finding no love in the publishing world. And frankly these poets tend to be community workers - tend to be involved with artistic and activist communities - and applying what they write about to practice. Rupi can do whatever the fuck she wants (excepting plagiarism) but I don’t have respect for her or her work.

realgarn

This is going around again and I wanted to add something re: Instagram, which has been on my mind recently. I’m really wary of using the term “Tumblr poetry” because poetry on this platform is quite diverse and includes many wonderful communities. I do think there’s a difference, however, between collective Tumblr poetry, and “Instagram poetry.” I call it this not because it’s unique to that platform - it’s present here on Tumblr as well as Facebook and Twitter, and often operates because it’s cross-platform - and don’t mean to homogenize Instagram poetry either, but to point at this idea of “instant poetry.”

The idea I get from “Instagram poetry” is taking sometimes simple, sometimes more complex emotions, stripping them of personal context - e.g. narrative about one’s life - making an observation about those emotions, and turning it into a graphic. Emotions that are extremely relatable about, say, bad relationships or wanderlust, become an aesthetic. They’re super palatable and easily digested but don’t require much artistry or authenticity from the artist; that they make sense no matter who you are allows them to gain traction.

What concerns me with Insta poetry is that it isn’t insulated. It’s great that people connect to this writing, and that there are happy suppliers of this content. There is strategic art that goes into it, surely. And again, I’m not here to comment on what anyone enjoys, but this content does lack artistry. It lacks personality. It often has nothing to do with a poet’s life.

Rupi does this well. Most of her poems are very generalized comments on diaspora, relationships, misogyny, growth. This is Fine (when not plagiarized). But, in combination with what I discuss in my original post, her poetry feels like something that’s just supposed to be consumed, not engaged with. I often wonder what an interviewer could reasonably ask her about her process - artistic process, emotional process. And this process of consumption very much relates to the process of tokenization, which turns the oppressed body into an aesthetic to fill a quota.

I don’t think it’s totally wrong to interrogate artistry. I do believe most things are “art” but quality isn’t 100% objective. It’s not. Especially when an artist dominates a market and plagiarizes from Black artists. I talk about this here (mobile only, sorry) - that when we discuss things like resources, narrative, and struggle, artistry is absolutely relevant and we can’t disregard it and hide behind attitudes that artistic quality is purely subjective and thus cannot be reasonably critiqued.

So going back to my original post - where is the narrative? How does her work relate to what ISN’T seen as easily consumed: work made by Black and Indigenous artists, LGBTQ artists, disabled artists, poor artists, artists who don’t put diaspora & war in easy terms, artists who don’t frame trauma as neatly? Where is the restitution for so many struggling, extremely skilled poets whose words are too many, too complex, too DIFFICULT? Where are their 1.5 million followers and second book deals and stuffed shelves in Barnes & Noble? Where is the money for them to eat? Where are their reparations as they write from historical trauma? What happens to those poets who cannot ever be consumable under market capitalism and white supremacy, because of who they are and how their art resists white supremacist capitalism?

And so my feelings aren’t just about Rupi’s personal decisions - but of course do in part concern them - but the way art has become so sterile, inauthentic, and exploitative.

realgarn

I do want to clarify, especially as this conversation unfolds on other social media, that I don’t think this phenomenon is unique to Rupi or even historically novel. I hope that came through in my conclusion about this being a broader issue of public art & what’s consumable; white men’s poetry, no matter its quality, has always been what’s “consumable,” and they have always (in the history of Western Art as an institution developed as part of Empire and to serve the construction of race) produced popular, low-quality, often violent poetry to extreme laudation (like…the entire Beats movement). This is very much apparent in who dominates ‘Insta poetry’ because it’s NOT women of color and much of it is really misogynistic.

And it’s frustrating that so many women of color & diasporic writers have to be interrogated on their consumption of Rupi’s poetry. There’s a complex interplay here of tokenization, rejection of “difficult” “unpalatable” “unaesthetic” poetry from women of color, and personal frustration as white consumers of poetry are so dedicated to comparing anyone even remotely resembling South Asians with Kaur. This isn’t a simple thing and I’m not placing all blame on Rupi - I do see this happening in many spheres and this concerns me as reductive and sometimes misogynist/racist - but want to interrogate all aspects of this phenomenon, which is not unique to her, the 2010s, or the medium of poetry.