“[O]ne ventures to guess that what Kaur is selling is not merely the neat, non-threatening lines of her poems, but her persona itself. In other words, Kaur the poet is Kaur the poetry.” Adaptation of a screenshot of Rupi Kaur’s Instragram feed, @rupikaur_.
A specter is haunting poetry. All the powers of prior poetic generations have entered into a holy alliance against them: lyric and language, conceptual and confessional, page and performance. It is the specter of social media, and the extreme popularity of the individuals who flourish on platforms such as Tumblr and Instagram, as well as off them.
