What the fucking fuck?
These are just aphorisms!
There’s no literary devices at all and completely banal observations like “I have a heart. Before you, it beat like a normal heart does according to science,” and look hey if you dig on it – that ain’t no thang but a chicken wang – you keep on reading and loving it and enjoy but got-damn! I don’t get it. You give me an Insta Poet writing this zzzzzzzzzz and I will provide you the name of writer you can read who shows (not tells!) what it means to express something hard/tragic/magic/beautiful using artful language, rather than pedestrian sentences enjambed for no good reason. I mean, not even any imagery, like the most basic of poetic devices – literally, “You were my dog, but I am cat person #poetryisnotdead.” Not yet, but you’re doing a bang-up job of killing it, motherfuckers!
Tears fall. Toilets flush.
(Sorry you had to bear witness to my breakdown. And look, I know from bad poetry. I’m the guy who wrote an entire book of sonnets about your mom and composed an ode to a miniature version of Milli Vanilli hiding out in my underwear drawer, but yesterday I clicked on an article about Instagram poets to follow for Poetry Day and I wish I hadn’t. Can someone explain the appeal?)
Jason Preu 
I only look at my undergrad poetry center on Instagram, I’m totally biased!
https://www.instagram.com/uapoetrycenter/
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Maybe there is hope! Thank you for sharing.
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You cheated! There isn’t much writing posted there! 😉
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I realized after I wrote my love for that particular poetry center, that I’m sure you will find poetry centers all over the world that could maybe have more writing examples… I do think haikus are challenging to make interesting…
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Thank you J truly for expressing the same feeling of frustration and rage I’d felt and ran and ran and ran away from IG “haiku poetry greats” with great tears in my eyes spilling over onto the ground 😢😡🤬😡.This post sends relief ! 🙌. If you just tell me stuff in that 3 word haiku, well, I may just SHOW YOU SOMETHING but TY you cooled the fire before it began 😅…and kept my laptop intact.😊
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For reals. I spent so much time last night finding others who shared my horror, which helped calm me down a bit. Like this one: https://angelavolkov.substack.com/p/banal-but-relatable-why-your-instagram?s=r
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i like you
You don’t like me
Death is my heart.
hehee not a real one but one I made to give the flavor :p
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Sorry, Jade. You’ve employed a literary device. Back to the drawing board. 🙂
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Also and another thing by the way – I’m not critical
of any of these writers as writers doing their writing thing. What I am critiquing is defining their work as poetry. What they seem to write are aphorisms, or affirmations, or observations – or fortune cookies, too. A lot of it reads like a fortune cookie. I dunno. It just bums me out to get a list of 10 great instagram poets and not see one poem because I guarantee there are poems out there on the old insta waiting to be soaked up and turned over and relished for their turns of phrase and many-tendrilled allusions…
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Yes, I was thinking this too. I don’t want anyone to not want to write poetry, however they find their voice! But the popularity factor makes it feel so limiting…as if the general public is just very lazy & not even wanting to read a poem in the first place!
But they may like to try…and see some new variety. That could make life so much more interesting!! 🙂
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I hope the writing leads to an exploration of different techniques and forms and just the variety of possibilities available.
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Yes! 😊
>
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I found your breakdown rather amusing. And Milli Vanilli 😀 That made me chuckle. Goodness me, what a throwback. I was a wee thing but oh I remember them.
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Here’s for a chuckle, the second: https://jasonpreu.com/2015/02/25/ode-to-the-miniaturized-clones-of-milli-vanilli-whove-been-living-in-my-underwear-drawer-since-2003/
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