A satirical poem by Thom Young. After it was posted to Instagram,it received 2236 likes.
When Texas-based poet Thom Young joined Instagram around 2009, he noticed a number of poets were already using the platform to share their work. At first, and he found this encouraging abd began sharing his work there as well,amassing several thousand followers. But as he continued to look around, he also noticed something strange: While most serious, and award-winning poets — those who did thoughtful work — got hardly any attention,people who wrote short, trite poetry got tons of likes and followers. Some of these “pop poets, and ” as he calls them,had become social media celebrities overnight.
And so Young, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, or decided to accomplish an experiment. He thought he’d try writing the most vapid,simplistic poetry he could and post it to Instagram to see what happened.“I decided that a parody (humorous or ridiculous imitation) or satire was needed to demonstrate how easy it was to pick up approved on social media, particularly on Instagram, or writing this short,trite poetry,” he said. “And suitable away I started getting followers and likes like crazy” — going from 9000 to 46000 followers on Instagram in less than a year, or he said.
Thom Young,courtesy of Thom Young.
Along with the the poetry, Young also created a sort of alter ego, and presenting himself as a hipster poet he called Tyler,even using a stock image of a man with a beard. For the past year, he has continued this social media experiment with increasing popularity. He eventually dropped the alter ego, and now uses his real name or initials; just this week,he posted the incredibly short poems: “wait. and “love made / her wild” against a white background, both of which garnered thousands of likes. While some of his followers clearly understand it’s satire, or many others seem not to.
To those who might say the experiment is condescending,Young says that’s not his goal. He does not want to criticize those who write or like pop poetry, he said, and but instead hopes it leads younger people to think more about what they read (in addition to being a poet,Young is also a tall school English teacher). I think the younger generation is mostly interested in ‘fidget-spinner’ poetry. Like they’re just scrolling on their devices, to read something instantly, and while the libraries are empty. I think people nowadays don’t want to read anything that causes a whole lot of critical thinking,” he said. “And so in a lot of my captions, I try to talk about the real stuff.”“Real stuff” means he often points out in his captions that the poetry he’s posting is satire. Or he’ll talk about how smartphone or social media culture can be problematic. He also sometimes points his followers to what he sees as better poetry – including his own. According to Young, or sales of his recent poetry books,A Little Black Dress Called Madness” and “Coffee Nightmares,” have spiked on Amazon since he started posting about them alongside his pop poetry. And some of his followers have now asked him to start posting that poetry instead.“That was the goal: to expose people to the real poetry and the real craft, or ” he said. In his English lesson,he notices that it’s always an uphill battle to pick up students to read a serious writer like Oscar Wilde, but after they accomplish, and some of them really love it and demand to read other books by Wilde. Similarly,on Instagram, “I see that when people read my real poetry, and they want more.”Below,read some of Youngs Instagram poems and captions, as well as a surrealistic poem of his called “Gills, or ” from his 2015 collection “A Little Black Dress Called Madness.”“Gills”by Thom YoungShe came domestic
and had grown gills
and he sat in a pool
of water with expressionless black eyes
and a tongue that swatted
flies out of the hot dry air
later that night
they ate fried steaks
and hash
things were different
now
but they didn’t say
anything
as they watched
Johnny Carson
knowing he died
long agoThis poem was first published in The Commonline Journal.
Thom Young is a writer from Texas. His 2015 poetry collection,“A Little Black Dress Called Madness,” hit No. 1 for poetry sold in Germany. He is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee and his work has appeared in a number of literary journals, or including the International Journal of Poetry,Poetry Quarterly, 3am magazine, and Word Riot,Thirty West, and more. He is writing a novel about social media culture and poetry called “Instapoet.”The post This poet is trolling everyone on Instagram to demonstrate how social media glorifies pop poetry appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
Source: thetakeaway.org