I find myself retorting to a reader, Nancy, who emailed me to say — in response to my calling something "a sincere effort at poetic polemic" — "Polemic, yes, but who would call that a poem?"
At the link there's video of a performance called "White Privilege," which Slate called a "poem." I can see that I repeated that word, "poem," before my sentence that began with "I think": "I think it's a sincere effort at poetic polemic." I know I wrote "poetic polemic" to nudge the reader to question whether something that's too polemical deserves to be considered poetry.
But, speaking of "White Privilege," isn't it white-privilege-y to question whether this set of words is a poem? I'm resisting googling "What is a poem?" but I do remember watching the "Master Class" course with Billy Collins teaching reading and writing poetry, so let me give you this from the old white man:
"No one else could have written that. This voice is just yours, and yours alone."
ADDED: I went back to the email to tell Nancy: "I made a poem post out of this."
And I see that Nancy has written back to me: "She calls it a poem."
"She" is the reciter of "White Privilege," who I see I haven't yet dignified with a naming in this post, so let me say, it's Kyla Jenee Lacey.
Mga Post
