The quoted example isn’t any worse than John Lennon’s Imagine, which still holds the record for stupefyingly trite and mimsyish song lyrics.
I dunno…crappy poetry aside, I think the point of the whole thing is that the kid was thinking outside his own situation. As far as the parents go, shit…they lost all their children to this disease. Maybe it makes them feel better knowing that one of them contributed something to the Big Life Picture, however crappy it was on an artistic level.
I mean, if the only lasting contribution your child makes is a book of crappy poetry that illustrates that he was a caring, thoughtful kid, you’d probably hang on to it as well. I’m not going to pick up a copy of his work, but I’m certainly not going to put his parents into the Exploitive column over it. They’re hanging on to whatever they can. I’d probably do the same thing.
From that article: “I feel like someone’s cramming a rainbow down my throat.”
Now that’s poetry
Oh what the fuck ever.
I’m not real clear on the reason for a Pitting, here. “Dying doesn’t make poetry profound:” true enough, but it’s also the case that profundity isn’t the only measure of poetry. Other qualities, such as humor, courage and sincerity might come into play. There’s a lot of art that has been admired as much for the mere fact that it was created at all as it has been for its technical merit. There’s quite a lot of art that appeals to a lot of people but not to some who enjoy more refined, educated and discriminating tastes. And there’s art that gains popularity based on the notoriety of its creator/s as much as on his/her/their proficiency, and there’s no doubt art that is simply idiosyncratic and is purchased and loved because it appeals to some personality flaw the collector shares with the artist.
What I cannot understand is why these (by someone’s definition) less-accomplished artists generate so much venom. Well, I can sort of get why some people would like to like to hit Thomas Kincaide with a custard pie, but I mean aside from that. In this case, is it sheer outrage at the offense against meter and rhyme? I doubt it: the offense isn’t that severe. Is it some sense that a fraud is being perpetrated? Don’t think so: caveat emptor, and all that. Besides, a solicitous concern for the masses who’ve caved in to bad taste isn’t a big feature of these posts. Is it that they think more deserving poets are being harmed by Master Stepanek’s success? Show me the dip in sales of “profound” poetry concurrent with FOR OUR WORLD’s success. Someone’s suggestion that their anger is directed at the debasement of their culture rings a tad hollow in a world in which women in bikinis eat bugs and/or are seduced into a romantic arrangement with false promises of wealth for the sake of entertainment. Fear for your culture? First, prove you have some. Is it just the damned unfairness of it all, that dying 13-year-olds get to shove their way to the front of that golden poetic gravy train while so many of us, unpublished because we, more (but not more enough, huh?) talented weren’t lucky enough to be stricken with MDA and had to suffer rejection because of it? Well, that is unfair. All the wrong people get the breaks.
You know, sometimes people show sympathy for a cause or affection for its spokesman by demonstrating an appreciation for a stricken child’s efforts that may seem disproportionate to the dispassionate expert, and they may even use their money to help do it more emphatically. They may not even register the inferior quality of those efforts from a commercial or artistic standpoint. When it’s pointed out to them, they may not care. They may wonder why so many words are spent attacking bad art rather than creating good art, or at least trying to. Or maybe they’re busy hanging their own kid’s latest work on the refrigerator. And for the silent millions, maybe they’ve just absorbed the primitive superstition of not flinging shit at dead/dying children, and need to be taught how to enjoy it.
I’m going to hell, aren’t I?.. For enjoying that article and that particular line as much as I did.
That’s true, but most of the time it amounts to “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
And they don’t have time to carve it.
It is not that dying people never have anything to say; it is that dying doesn’t atomatically make what they have to say important.
This kid was just selling bullshit.
This kind of reminds me where that father made his 9-year daughter try for the cross-country piloting record and then they crashed because she couldn’t fly in a storm and he wouldn’t take the controls, and then the mother was on TV rambling like for 18 hours about how this was her dream, how she died doing what she wanted to do, how there was a lesson in this for all of us, how she touched the face of god, how she was a hero, how her life serves as an inspiration to all of us, how she’s looking down on us from heaven right now, how she was going to go light a peace candle in her memory, etc… I understand grief, but lady, understand the difference between grief and milking it on TV.
This is just more cult of the child stuff. When somebody dies, it’s sad. When a child dies, it’s a tragedy. When they die of a terrible disease, it’s a heartbreaking tragedy. When they write a poetry anthology, it’s money in the motherfuckin’ bank.
The kid was not selling bullshit. The kid was coping and I find it hard to blame the kid for trying to cope.
I do pile a shit load of blame and scorn on the parent, Oprah, and various promoters of this sort of public mourning. One would hope that death, tragic as his was, would deserve more private grieving and dignity.
Bing-fucking-o. The kid was doing what tons of people do when they’re facing the end of the line. He was sorting through his thoughts and feelings and trying to apply that as a reason for being born into a short life. No great mystery there. The parent was having a natural response to loss as well (in my opinion). The goddie types tend to think that a purpose needs to be fulfilled and I think she was acting in accordance with that. People do weird things in the face of impending loss.
But the power-grieving thing by the media…the playing of the public’s emotions… that’s another thing altogether. They’re the ones that tried to turn his “journal”, if you will, into something we “need” to hear…as if it was a message from on high or something. I mean, I seriously doubt this kid said, “mom…god told me to get this published because he wants to reach a bunch of people through me.”
I’m not offended by the art (or lack of it). I am put off by the exaggerated sense of profundity the media types applied to it. It’s the god brigade at work again. “He’s speaking to us through this poor, sick child.” Manipulation at its ugliest. But it certainly ain’t crap and it certainly ain’t the kids’ fault. He’s a kid, fercrissakes. It’s his thoughts.
I say “hear hear” to the OP. I felt sad for the kid but he was a glurge machine and people piled on the praise for his HORRIBLE poetry. Of course its heartless and cruel to say outloud that he blow chunks poetry-wise – and I used to work for a major international bookseller, so I had to claim it didn’t suck lots of times as a condition of my employment. Oh the many times I called his latest crapfest/sapfest “heartfelt” when I really, really wanted to call it “sucky.” Honestly I have considered this very same pitting myself from time to time.
And no, sincerity does not make poetry good, else we would all have masterworks in our 13th-year diaries.
BTW, I am not pitting the kid for writing crappy poetry (which is a perfectly normal thing to do at 13 as suggested by me just above). I am pitting the people who promote the hell out of him, call his poetry “good,” and suggest that you are Evil Incarnate if you don’t agree (and own the six-volume boxed set).
Oprah is the key to the whole thing. If she praises a book that’s crap, people will buy it and tell themselves it’s great because she said so. Maya Angelou’s “poetry” doesn’t exactly inspire a lot of people, but she’s Oprah’s friend, so she gets to milk it for every cent she can get from people who swoon over her Winfrey-recommended drivel.
Very true. Just ask Jim Croce. 
Oh, dear.
That poetry isn’t just crap. It’s boring crap, which is far worse.
Absolutely, it matters, to some, whether a poet or thinker is an authentic gal or chap. I don’t remember the details (someone here surely will, I hope), but there was a tremendous flap about the “fraud” committed by an (Australian?) poet who wrote a book of poems supposedly written by a young survivor of Hiroshima (or perhaps a victim of Japanese aggression?), which was peddled to, and published by, an important academic press. Almost universally lauded by critics, until the hoax was revealed, at which point all hell broke loose. Similar to the Sokol hoax in many important details.
People (idiots) lap up all kinds of crap when they believe they’re dealing with the genuine article.
Just wondering, does this mean that Lance Armstrong became less profound once he recovered?
At least it doesn’t appear that Mattie’s parents went out and hired a talented poet to pen verses to pass off as Mattie’s. The poetry may not be any good, but at least we don’t have another Opal Mehta scandal on our hands.
I was thinking of someone else named Jim, actually, but you can fill in whatever examples you like.