What is poetry? Well, I used to think I had some sort of idea and could at least distinguish a poem from ordinary prose when I saw one, but apparently such attitudes belong back in the Ark.
This, to me, is not a poem. But by the canons of modern taste, it sure is one! Some better and more astute critic referred to "chopped-up prose" in the context of modern poetry, and that is what this is (at least, to my eyes). Remove the line breaks, and you have a bog-standard piece for online space-filling. It'd fit perfectly in one of those cooking or hobby blogs where the producer is semi-professional and needs page scrolling to generate income, so they fill up the spaces with tons of reminiscences about Grandma in the kitchen on those summer/autumn/winter days cooking up the recipe, and tons of filler blah, until you eventually get to the recipe or knitting pattern or advice on how to embezzle from your employer.
I'm not expecting modern poetry to neatly rhyme and fit into the patterns of past poems, but I do at least expect a poem. Not a 'pome'.
Irish Linen, by Lane Shipsey
Pure Irish Linen
a phrase from long ago
woven into those plain tea-towels
that smoothed away wet suds
from Mother’s wedding set
Her good linen cloths
were kept to buff glass and china
or left safely in the drawer
while gaudier prints took on the grime
and stains of daily wear
I teased her for it then,
not knowing the grown-up equation
of good with expensive
And you didn’t buy Pure Irish Linen,
it was a thing you were given
A cloth spun and woven
from flax pulled and scutched
across the border, a fact on which
we did not dwell much, in Dublin
where we never called it Ulster linen
The words Pure, Irish, and Linen
no longer form an automatic cluster
Instead we buy the best fabrics we can muster
regardless of origin
whilst a machine blows our dishes dry.
As I said, remove the line breaks and you have a twee, faux-folksy piece of musings suitable for anything from a mommy blog to a chin-stroking piece on Norn Iron and how we down South approach it to a meditation on modern living and/or cottagecore aspirations, applicable for print or online media, traditional or social.
Edition version below and you look me in the eye and insist "No, that is a true real poem", I dare you.
"Pure Irish Linen" - a phrase from long ago, woven into those plain tea-towels that smoothed away wet suds from Mother’s wedding set. Her good linen cloths were kept to buff glass and china or left safely in the drawer while gaudier prints took on the grime and stains of daily wear.
I teased her for it then, not knowing the grown-up equation of "good" with "expensive". And you didn’t buy Pure Irish Linen, it was a thing you were given.
A cloth spun and woven from flax pulled and scutched across the border, a fact on which we did not dwell much in Dublin, where we never called it "Ulster" linen.
The words Pure, Irish, and Linen no longer form an automatic cluster. Instead, we buy the best fabrics we can muster regardless of origin, whilst a machine blows our dishes dry.
This has been a howl into the abyss on behalf of dinosaurs everywhere.
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Notes -
I've been to quite a few poetry readings over the years, and in much the same way that I wish modern spoken-word performers/lecturers/sermonisers would stop pretending that what they're doing is actually a more advanced and experimental form of standup comedy, too intellectual for mere mortals (who expect to laugh and feel entertained by comedy, the plebs) to grasp - I likewise wish that amateur "poets" would just drop the facade, stop pretending that they're writing poetry, and have the balls to get up onstage and say "I'm going to rant impassionately and inelegantly about my interpersonal grievances for a few minutes."
It looks to me like both of those links are just stand-up. Dry humor is a thing. Some of the critics seemed to think that it wasn’t funny enough, not that it didn’t have any jokes.
Is including a message pretentious award-bait? Is it an attempt to grab an expanding market niche? Perhaps. But it’s also not unique to modern comedy, let alone the broader field of performance art.
No, Nanette was quite explicitly marketed and received as "post-comedy" i.e. standup without jokes. My understanding is that it's structured as a conventional standup act for the first few minutes before abruptly pivoting to intentionally humourless confrontational lecturing for the remainder. "[Gadsby] realised the self-deprecating humour common to standup comedy is doubly painful for marginalised people because it adds another voice to the chorus of people who already insult and belittle them.This led them to conclude that they can no longer do standup comedy and so they structured the piece around claiming that they are giving up comedy." (See here for more information: https://theoutline.com/post/5962/the-nanette-problem-hannah-gadsby-netflix-review)
There's a big difference between dry humour and an erstwhile standup comedian announcing that they're not going to do comedy anymore because it's traumatic to marginalised people - in the middle of a recording explicitly marketed as an experimental form of standup comedy. This isn't even a criticism of Gadsby's ability, she's a good public speaker and very passionate, but this is quite clearly spoken word performance, not comedy (not dry humour) and it would be far more sensible to market it appropriately.
Minhaj is the same basic deal. In this six-minute clip, I had to wait 1:45 until Minhaj said something that sounded like it was intended to be a joke ("hate crime barber shop"). Everything prior to that, and a great deal after, is an entirely earnest monologue about his (probably invented) experiences as a Muslim growing up in a racist USA. It's political commentary, it's spoken word performance, it's performance art - it's not stand-up, or dry humour. The audience aren't laughing, they're applauding. Of course standup comedy can be political, but when you take political comedy and subtract the comedy, all you're left with is a lecture.
Come on, 17 seconds into this he jokes about rubbing off his skin color. It's a dumb joke but it's clearly supposed to be a joke and the audience laughs too.
Of course then it's another minute and a half of seriousposting.
Edit: I realize you posted this a month ago but I ran into this again following another link.
Okay, fair enough. I still think it's fair to say that what Minhaj is doing is quite different from political stand-up comedy in the traditional sense (and not in a good way).
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