i think every publisher should have to institute a ban on books that fail what i’m calling the “little life” and “what else?” tests
for reference.
I’m sorry but this is so pretentious and such bullshit. Cannot imagine going through that critique on a poem of the grief and horror of losing a sibling in a freak accident without slapping the critic directly in the face.
I’m specifically reminded of The Floor Planers by Gustave Caillebotte. A painting of working men, planing the wood flooring in a home.
So they leveled the floor? And?
The painting records an extinct practice, a completely benign and boring manual labor job performed over a century ago that no longer exists. A glimpse into how life was lived before our modern tools were created.
I think of the many painting of Van Gogh, The Potato Eaters, Sorrowing Old Man at Eternity’s Gate, Portrait of an Old Man, his neighbors and friends whose names are lost to history but whose visages will be forever remembered.
A poem created from the trauma of losing a sibling, a person that you’ve known your entire life, gone, suddenly, and some pretentious asswipe says “ok and?” Get the fuck out of here.
Especially in the year 2026, with all of our data being scraped and fed to machines so that they can attempt to create anything resembling a human experience, we should cherish all works created genuinely and authentically by human beings.
Keep a diary, write poems about your trauma, create authentic works based on your own lived experience, paint portraits of your neighbors. Even if you never see publishing or fame in your lifetime, you never know how it will be experienced in 50, 100, 500 years from now.
