Transcriber: Hendel Shimizu Reviewer: Amanda Zhu
“I pace around trying to remember that last line, that poem I wrote,
but then the memories begin to drown and nonchalant cases begin to float.
Forget me, for I am but a figment of your memory,
conflicted to trade a daring person.
I will not admit this but the memories.
I am the vault that holds things so sacred.
But my brain was like the guard with reverie.
Forget me, for I am but a figment of your memory.
Resisting is only a regretful word for remorse.
Again, my friend, we must make amends, but I the wind cannot speak,
so I ask the trees for a warning to be sent.
Forget me, for I am but a figment of your memory.
I am the history of tomorrow.
But the history of mine was yesterday.
How oft do I lose a memory of mine?
Washed on shore, a seashell yells my name.
Forget me, for I am but a figment of your memory.”
These are the first four stanzas that I wrote
shortly after my mom arrived from her pilgrimage to Mecca.
She told me that while she was there,
she was so entranced by the purity and holiness of the place
that she blurted out a four-line stanza and kept on repeating it.
When she had arrived home,
she had only remembered two, and a week later she had forgotten it all.
It wouldn't have hurt her to write it down.
But oh well.
Now, I could go on and explain what this poem truly means.
But I think the beauty of poetry is found when trying to analyze it yourself.
I could, however, go through the literary elements,
such as the personification of seashell yelling my name,
and so on and so forth.
Yet with all of these literary elements,
I would not call this a good poem unless it invoked something bigger.
Poetry isn’t good because it’s complex.
It isn’t good because it’s simple.
Take Dr. Seuss’s poetry.
He makes poetry that is aimed specifically for kids.
But why would I call his work poetry
and not any other work that I find on the Internet?
It’s because despite the crazy words he comes up with,
like the “thingamajig” or the abstract ideas that he makes,
like The Cat in the Hat,
he still gives some leeway
for children to explore what these things actually mean
or how they act like.
And in the case of The Cat in the Hat, it could even symbolize something bigger,
such as disobedience.
But what does modern poetry look like today?
It’s very noticeable
that our medium for exchanging poetry has drastically changed.
Back then,
if you wanted to publish a poem,
you would get rejected from every editor every single time.
And on the bright chance that one editor accepts you,
the best case scenario is that you’re going to have your poem
in a small column in the newspaper
or in one page of a poetry book.
Nowadays you can publish poems with one click of a button
and so people can post what they want right away
without giving it a second thought.
And on the other hand,
the users of these social media platforms
are mindlessly scrolling through this platform.
And so, when they go there,
they go there for a place of entertainment,
a place of escape.
And if they see something too complex,
they will most likely skip it.
So poets naturally have to accommodate to this.
And what they do
is that they make their poetry short, concise and straight forward.
Let me give you this example.
“I sat by the curb as it rained, thinking about all my pain.”
Here, it has rhyme, it has rhythm, it has imagery,
it has good literary elements.
Yet it is too straightforward yet too vague at the same time.
And I know those two sound like antonyms, right?
But the straightforwardness comes in the essence of the situation
where it is as simple as somebody sitting by the curb
as it rain
thinking about all of their pain.
The vagueness comes in the word “pain.”
The poets might have written this poem
with the intention of speaking about the pain of grieving a loved one.
But you, on the other hand,
might be interpreting it as the pain of losing maybe half a mark on a test.
And so this vagueness allows a factor of relatability
and the relatability makes this poem seem more appealing.
In fact, it is something as simple as it could ever be.
And here, it isn’t that unique, it isn’t that original,
and it makes you feel like the poem is deeper than what it already is.
And when a poem looks deeper than what it actually is,
we call this phenomena “fake deep poetry.”
What is fake deep poetry?
It is, as the name suggests, something that looks deep,
but once you take a closer look,
it really isn’t.
And so it has been popping up a lot recently
with the constant namedropping of serious issues.
Some poets think that if they namedrop issues,
it will look more brave,
but in fact,
it just makes their poems weaker.
So let me give you this example.
This poet has troubles with their father.
So this poet writes,
“My father, he is never proud.
To this day, he has not said it aloud.”
And here, yeah, again, it’s rhymed and it has rhythm,
but it is almost the complete opposite of my previous example.
It is too straightforward.
But what if I reword it?
What if I said,
“I want to give you the satisfaction of a million critiques.
I want to rise from the lowest low
and reach the standard that you call the peak”?
Here, not only is it more open to interpretation
but it keeps the initial goal of the poet
while also making others empathize with the situation.
Back then, in the previous example,
it was only narrow to a certain group of people
who have went through the circumstance.
But the beauty of language is to make people empathize,
to make people feel something that they have never experienced.
This begs an even bigger question:
How did we get to poetry today?
It is as simple as it could ever be -
labeling.
Poetry is such an open form of art
that anything can constitute for a poem these days.
In fact, there’s a type of poetry called contemporary poetry
in which it asks you to make poetry that does not sound like poetry.
Try saying that 10 times fast.
And so nowadays anything will be labeled as a poem.
Some people will write advice, dialogue or experiences
and label them as poetry
when they could be channeling this energy into making memoirs,
advice books, or even young adult novels.
I mean, celebrities come out with more poetry books
than Martha Stewart comes out with cookbooks.
And trust me, she makes a lot.
Let me tell you this good poem that I heard recently.
Listen to this.
“Actual poetry.
Listen to my story.
Stay to watch the way.
Let the ages play.
We to the young men
speak these words again.”
It sounds so beautiful, so raw, so original.
Want to know who the author is?
Artificial intelligence.
Is it so original anymore?
I don’t think so.
Poetry is so unique that it is considered as another Turing test.
And the Turing test is basically a test
to see if artificial intelligenc has reached human intelligence.
And so if poetry is brought upon a person
and a person cannot identify that an AI wrote this,
then artificial intelligence will be deemed as intelligent as us.
If we keep mislabeling things,
then we might as well say that AI is as intelligent as us.
But you may be asking,
“Zahraa, who are you to critique poetry?
Isn’t poetry subjective? ”
Well, brace yourselves.
I’m about to hit you with a hard truth.
It is not.
Poetry is not subjective.
Think about it.
If poetry was subjective,
why would we go to school every day and learn and read literature from before?
Why do we take upon ourselves English majors that criticize
and tell us the elements of literature
that tell us what’s good and tell us what’s bad?
It’s so that we can channel all this energy into our own work
and make our work that much better.
It’s OK, I won’t judge your taste of poetry.
You may like bad poetry and hates good poetry.
I am not here to judge you,
but your preference does not change the fact of whether this poem is good
or whether this poem is bad.
And here I will complete the final stanza of that poem I wrote earlier.
“And I too frail to answer the call,
look into my head for a rejoiced symphony.
And although the record player
may be broken,
I’ll hear new sounds blissfully.
Forgive me, for I, the poem and this last line are ...”
Ellipses.
Incomplete.
I left the poem open to insert you into my narrative.
That’s the beauty of poetry.
It truly is.
Let me tell you one of the greatest poems
I’ve actually heard,
and trust me, it’s not written by AI,
I’m not tricking you again.
It was as simple as it could ever be -
four letters, two words, one space -
recited by the greatest Muhammad Ali.
It was “Me we”.
Now what does “Me we” mean?
It has no meaning,
because you are the one that will input meaning into it.
You will identify what it means.
Muhammad Ali, he never told us what it meant.
He left it open for us.
This change starts with “me” and then it ends with “we.”
Should I forget about “me” and focus on the “we.”
The opportunities are endless.
What is so great about poetry and this magnificent art
is that it invokes -
better yet, it incites - emotion
and it instills thought.
And poetry might not have a definitive meaning.
But one thing is true.
Poetry is a form of art that involves you.
Thank you for listening to my TEDxTalk.
(Applauses)