Without a leg to stand on, poets espouse all the approved causes. The poetic essay is the fitting name of all those memoirs, soft political analyses, and acritical or intersectional books reviews embellished with poetaster flourishes. Poetry having only a century ago reached its very heights is thus thrown into the abyss of pop cultural studies. Pop culture suffuses the published work and online postings of Sandra âTaylor-Swift-in-a-time-of-warâ Simonds, Claudia âSerena-Williams-is-so-excellentâ Rankine, Myriam âmiddlebrow-fiction-denouncerâ Gurba, Cathy âwhat-to-stream-this-weekendâ Park Hong, Joshua âSwiftie-Diva-OGâ Clover. Pop sass deviates ever so slightly from the compulsions of the algorithm, the god of prose poets. In a recent Harperâs Ben Lerner has the algorithm write the end of the story-essay for him. As if all this werenât enough, there exist now poet-essayist influencers, acritical Instagram girls like Granta and New York Reviewâs Anahid Nersessian, whose elaborate progressive book hype appears at regular intervals. Her major topic is the highest good of the sanctioned ones: love and sex, erotic poetry.Â