Whereas professional wrestling is often condemned as lowbrow and “fake,” North American poetry has long been condemned as elitist and inconsequential. Insiders love what they love; outsiders sneer. Taste matters: both poetry and professional wrestling suffer critiques from eye-rolling outsiders; both nonetheless hold the passion of devoted insiders. And both, crucially, blur the boundaries of producers and consumers—be it performers and/as audiences or writers and/as readers.
from Myth! Allegory! Ekphrasis! Professional Wrestling & the Poetics of Kayfabe by Marion Wrenn [Some of my favorite excerpts of poems about prowres. Sources (from top to bottom, left to right): Allegory by Gregory Pardlo; The Use of Roland Barthes to Justify One's Love of Wrestling and For "Adorable" Adrian Adonis, Unable to Wash the Pink From His Hands by Colette Arrand; You Screwed Bret, To Be the Man, You've Got to Beat the Man, and sections 1, 4, and 5 of 10 Bell Salute by Michael Holmes.]
