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The Outrage Chronicles: Poetry 451
How Cancel Culture has Ruined Literary Criticism
If there ever was a time in which the literary world needed reminding of the necessity for mutual respect in their corner of the artistic playground, that time is now. Yesterday, outrage erupted across social media when one reader shared a thread denouncing a poem in the latest issue of Poetry Magazine. Hana Shapiro, a relatively unknown person with a paltry 141 Twitter followers, who calls herself a “budding poet,” sent a tweet with photos of a poem by Michael Dickman, highlighting what she believed were lines insensitive to POC readers. That Tweet was quickly latched onto by the online poetry community and shared over a thousand times.
This is unfailingly the way these outrage scenarios play out. A person shares an opinion expressing their reaction to a work, which is just their opinion, but it gains unprecedented momentum when those wanting to amplify their own voices share their agreement, creating a snowball effect which in the moment can feel overwhelming to those being targeted…
