Is Social Media Bad for Your Poetry?
I've been asked a bunch of questions related to social media and poetry. I'll try to answer them. But first... A SESTINA!
Hey friends and readers,
First, let me say that my friend Melanie Bettinelli alerted me to a prompt challenge that Petra Hernandez has been hosting on her winsomely titled Substack, Petra Glyphs.
Since it is the sixth day of February it means that there have already been six prompt words published that I haven’t used, so I decided to write a sestina using the following words:
This is how the Poetry Foundation defines the sestina:
A complex French verse form, usually unrhymed, consisting of six stanzas of six lines each and a three-line envoi. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a different order as end words in each of the subsequent five stanzas; the closing envoi contains all six words, two per line, placed in the middle and at the end of the three lines. The patterns of word repetition are as follows, with each number representing the final word of a line, and each row of numbers representing a stanza:
1 2 3 4 5 6
6 1 5 2 4 3
3 6 4 1 2 5
5 3 2 6 1 4
4 5 1 3 6 2
2 4 6 5 3 1
(6 2) (1 4) (5 3)
Some of my favorite examples were written by Elizabeth Bishop (“Sestina” and “A Miracle for Breakfast”) and Anthony Hecht (“The Book of Yolek”).
On Fridays The Rabbit Room has their Poetry Hour at 12pm CT (1pm ET), and I decided to see if I could complete this sestina within the hour. It’s a time when poets from around the world can log in and write silently with cameras and microphones off together and then come back in the end and share about the poetry writing experience. I was able to write the first four stanzas and the envoi of my poem, which I thought was pretty productive. I spent some of my free moments during the day trying to finish the last two stanzas and clean up the poem a bit.
This is what a few hours today have yielded…
────᯽────────᯽────
Summer: A Love Song
When I was young I had a woven basket Clasped to the front of my bike. A bumblebee Had chased me once. I jumped the curb. The grass Was crushed beneath my wheels. My shirt had cherries. It hung on me, too big, just like a blanket. Dad yelled and I felt like a nasty ant. When I was seven I became an aunt. I saw my nephew sleeping in a basket Swaddled up like a doll inside a blanket Stitched with flowers and a bumblebee. The baby’s lips were pink, as plump as cherries. His hair was soft and warm like summer grass. My high school boyfriend brushed the unmown grass Out of my eyes. I smiled and swept the ant Off of his thigh. We laughed. I fed him cherries That I brought with me in a berry basket. Then we ignored the single bumblebee That buzzed above. We lay beneath the blanket. I tried to hide beneath my cotton blanket. My college boyfriend always smelled like grass. “Optimus Prime, Jazz… oh and Bumblebee!” He kept toys from his past. He had an aunt Who’d mail him treats she bought at Market Basket. She baked him cakes with desiccated cherries. My husband said my aura smelled like cherries. We laughed. He stroked my thigh beneath the blanket. My mind was like an upturned Easter basket. The candy’s everywhere! It’s in the grass! His touches: soft and searching like an ant. My breathing tempo: Flight of the Bumblebee. Our letterhead, embossed with the bumblebee, Bears my calligraphy, as red as cherries. I wrote my news as slowly as an ant Crawls to its feast across the checkered blanket. And Time has made me slow, like growing grass. I crush my work and toss it in the basket. The bumblebee is lifeless on the blanket. The fallen cherries rot, obscured by grass. The ant is lost and shut inside the basket.
────᯽────────᯽────
Sestinas are notoriously difficult, but I think I did okay with the meter. If you consider how quickly I put this together I think it was, at the very least, a good writing exercise and a way to engage with Petra’s writing community. Not sure this is a keeper, but I think the progression from childhood relationships to adult relationships is probably the way to go in a longer poem like a sestina. Every love is a spiraling reiteration of the previous love. The lover is the same person but transformed over time and experience.
I am open to charitably given feedback
Let me know if I should keep working on this or if this is doomed:
Given the very social platform heavy nature of writing this poem, this reminds me of two questions I seem to be fielding a lot in texts, PMs, IRL, and elsewhere from people who are somewhat new writing poetry in the age of social media:
Why don’t I see more people publish their poems on their social feeds?
Does a poet need to be on social media?
I’m not an expert on anything, but I can try to explain some things.
1. Why don’t I see more people publish their poems on their social feeds?
When a writer has a really good poem there is a potential they can get it published in a “good” journal — maybe even a “top-tier” journal. Or they could save that poem and enter a contest and actually get money and a notable writing credit. However, if they post their wonderful work online it would prevent them from publishing it in most publications (with some notable exceptions being The Rattle, New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily). It certainly would keep them from entering it in a contest. However, I’ve seen some fantastic and well-established poets like Scott Cairns, Maryann Corbett, and Sherman Alexie publish their work on Substack. Just recently, Maryann prefaced her poem “On Rereading Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus in the Age of Generative AI” with the following:
I’d thought there was an actual call for poems on the subject, and I wrote one, expressing my not-at-all-positive opinion. Unsurprisingly, it does not appear in the issue, and I lack the patience to look for another home for such a niche offering. So I offer it here, hoping you have some response. [emphasis mine]
I find it heartening that someone who is as prolific and respected as Maryann would write this. And I hope you DO click on the link, read her poem, and comment. If we feel like something is well written and will connect with someone, shouldn’t we feel free to post it anywhere we want? For goodness sake, we are poets! We aren’t doing this for the fame and money, are we?
Well, actually, some people are, and if you are the type of ambitious versecrafter who wants to be anthologized and studied by generations of schoolchildren, I suppose being published in all the “right” places and rubbing elbows with today’s poetry gatekeepers is the thing to do.
However, I have noticed that there is a proliferation of poets who are posting their work online and skipping journals. Some poets are getting better engagement in Substack comment boxes than they would if they chose a more traditional outlet. This immediate connection between writer and reader can be a big incentive for a poet.
It also seems like online-only journals have been steadily gaining in legitimacy and some of these places may have more liberal publishing rules. To see the argument for publishing work that was first read on personal social media take a look at Timothy Green’s excellent post, Uncurated: The Case for a New Term of Art.
2. Does a poet need to be on social media?
Hahaha! Of course, they don’t need to be.
HOWEVER…
Are you trying to get presses to publish your manuscript? Do you have a book out and need to find a way to promote it? Do you like connecting with other poets and sharing resources? (See THIS.) Are you missing all those polite entreaties by the Poet Laureate of Oxford to rob museums of their precious artifacts?
Yes, social media can be full of unpleasantness and trolling, but there are a lot of people who want to talk about literature and share cool stuff. There are poets like me who are just trying to create a happy place for people to learn about poetry and make it fun for people. That’s why J. Tullius had his triolet contest, why The Rabbit Room has poetry hours, why Petra Hernandez and Tamarah Rockwood post poetry prompts. There are a lot of great things happening for poets online.
And I was talking to Sunil Iyengar recently about his new book The Colosseum Book of Contemporary Narrative Verse, and how he might want to consider being a bit more online so that readers could connect with him. He could also share information about readings. In fact, there is a one at the DC Arts Center this Sunday, February 8 from 3-5pm!
Obviously social media can help with promotion. Look at how Dana Gioia has effectively employed his online presence (and network of social media savvy poet-friends) to revive the work of Weldon Kees. He’s been on X and Facebook promoting his documentary (with a lovely feature by Boris Dralyuk ).
I know poets who have found Substack to be an excellent place to make connections with other writers, editors and readers. Personally, if I didn’t have a Substack I wouldn’t be able to go to graduate school. This is where I get my tuition. I also probably would not have become a Deputy Editor of New Verse Review. (Substack is where I first met Steve Knepper.)
Some naysayers will declare that this is all fake and doesn’t count as being social. Well, I call SHENANIGANS on those party poopers. Social media is a great way to make that first connection with other people who love poetry or whatever else you are into. This is a way to find out who is out there. And then, when the time is right, you can meet them in person at a reading, a conference, or at the local library book sale!
But that question in the title…
Is social media bad for your poetry?
Substack, Facebook, X and all the other platforms can make you miserable, and if that’s the case, by all means, step away. Do you waste your writing time scrolling when you could be creating poetry? Do you find yourself feeling worthless when you hear that another poet got into your dream journal and you didn’t? Comparison is the devil. Some people have a hard time navigating these feelings on social media.
And these platforms are engineered to keep you engaged ALL. THE. TIME. However, if you interact with intention and with attention to your resources social media can work for you and you can help others along the way. In this virtual space we can inspire each other to become better writers and better people.
And if this place ever gets awful, we can always leave.
We aren’t there yet. So let’s make this place awesome.
This was awesome entertainment: Zina's Sestina!
A balanced take, and filled with generous shoutouts. I didn't know some of these poets were posting poems on Substack.
I'm very grateful for the role social media played in bringing poetry to me here in this small town with no poetry community within an hour radius. And then, the radius for formal poetry is probably significantly larger. That said, I also hope to encourage something to grow in our area eventually, even if it's a small group of us, because I still feel something missing without any in person connection.