Be the Change You Want to See on Social Media
The Best Lack All Conviction Why the Worst Have Millions of Followers
Hi poets, writers and friends,
When you subscribe to this Substack, you get access to two free events each month, a poetry-publishing workshop and a reading and open-mic with our guest poets.
Become a paid subscriber, and you will also get access to a monthly writing workshop with a special guest facilitator each month. Scroll down to see this month’s feature.
Want even more support for your writing? Join The Poetry Salon Online for access to regular writing workshops, personal feedback, and a growing community of friends!
Be the Change You Want to See on Social Media
Whenever I hear a poet say that they don’t want to get involved in social media, I think of that line from Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming.”
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Now, my views on popularity and art, — they’re complicated. Nuanced. Not easy to funnel into a quick little essay for Substack. But let me try.
There are lots of reasons NOT to be on Social Media.
But they can all be summarized by this one quote by Voltaire.
Oh, Voltaire, you crotchety, old, croissant-eating misanthrope! You say it so well.
The reasons for NOT writing or sharing poetry are infinite. Here are some of the big ones:
There’s little or no money it.
It’s hard to learn how to use social media well.
People might not like your writing.
Strangers might make fun of you, or worse, ignore you.
You might succeed and then everyone will call you a sell-out.
Again, “contempt if you fail and hatred if you succeed.”
The “Best” Lack All Conviction.
In my social media feeds a lot of writers say, “I hope it’s okay to post here that I have a poem coming out in this journal,” or “I’m not good at tooting my own horn, but I was nominated for this award,” or “I know you’re all very busy, but my editor told me I have to post about this upcoming collection or she’s going to strangle me. Please don’t hate me.”
A lot of writers somehow feel that calling attention to their writing is shameful, like trying to sell them a time share in Vegas. It’s ironic since most of the time what they’re promoting is something they’re giving away for free!
Sharing is Caring!
I scroll social media often, compulsively. I may have a problem and need to see a therapist.
But I’m on there of my own free will and because I want to share and see what others are sharing. I am never offended when anyone shares a poem or tells me about a book they had accepted. I’m usually grateful, intrigued, or happy for them.
At worst, I may not like what they share, or I may decide I don’t have time to read it and bookmark it for later.
I, For One, am Grateful When Someone Posts a Poem on Social Media. Please do it More Often.
And if I see someone has succeeded, i.e. gotten a lot of attention, sold a lot of books, won an award, or anything else - yeah, I do feel a little jealous. I also feel glad that people are reading poetry. I am glad that young people are seeing more poetry in their feeds. I’m glad that people who used to feel they had no voice are finding a voice.
The other big reason people avoid the spotlight is that they feel it makes their art dirty somehow. Trying to become “Instagram Famous” feels like trying to pander to the lowest common denominator. Poets and writers who are popular and rich aren’t really writing “art,” they’re making “products” for sale. Selling, by its very nature, is dirty. Popularity waters things down, and writing needs watering down to be popular.
I’m sure you know people who have this attitude. Maybe you even are one of these people. You assume that in order to become “popular” you must become a sellout. The number of popular artists who have made a name for themselves, but don’t meet a certain standard of actual merit are pretty legion. I feel like any time some poet enters the spotlight, especially a young poet like Amanda Gorman or Rupi Kaur, there’s a backlash from more “established” poets who resent when young people see commercial success without “paying their dues”. But this isn’t true just along lines of gender or race or age. Some take aim at Billy Collins or Mary Oliver for being too “approachable”, “approachable” being code for “easy” and among some factions, “bad.”
Emma Winters writes in this article that Instagram poets make her ask what good poetry is!, pointing out that a some popular IG poets are just selling cliches of self-affirmation and calling it poetry.
I’m not going to tackle subjective criteria of “good” vs. “bad” poetry right now. I will say that poets I deeply admire have developed great followings and are reaching thousands of readers.
“Good” Writing Can Be Just as Popular as “Bad” Writing on Social Media.
A lot of people afraid to post online lack conviction not only in themselves, but in their fellow human beings. What do I mean? If writing for the masses means dumbing things down, what does that say, exactly? Maybe you don’t have faith in people to be intelligent, to understand you, or to appreciate the sacred. Are there good reasons to believe this? (Don’t you get me started), of course there are.
You can tell there’s truth in this belief just by seeing what is popular. I used to roll my eyes so hard at people who like/d Brittney Spears, especially her song “Sometimes.” Here is the chorus.
Sometimes I run
Sometimes I hide
Sometimes I'm scared of you
But all I really want is to hold you tight
Treat you right
Be with you day and night
Baby, all I need is time
“It is cliche’ after cliche’ after cliche’!” I would scream. (I was an angry teenager, and I funneled my rage and ennuei into criticizing other people’s writing.)
But let’s ask another question. Sure, folks like Ms. Spears are popular, maybe undeservedly so, but who’se fault is that?
As a younger person I liked much of what was fed to me in popular media. I didn’t have a lot of quality control or critical thinking skills until I got older, until I saw examples of what higher quality IS. I fell for the simple stuff, some might say the really “bad” art because it was on my plate, along with my boxed macaroni and cheese.
I think we can agree that profits alone are a pretty shitty motive to do anything. The “worst” people are full of passionate intensity, because being bad can pay off in big ways. Would people become drug dealers if there wasn’t a profit incentive? Any terrible things going on in society today probably happen because somebody gets paid to make them happen.
Charlie Chaplin once said:
“You need power,
only when you want
to do something harmful.
Otherwise, love is enough to get everything done.”
In some ways, I’m glad that poetry doesn’t pay more. It means poets will write and produce in spite of the lack of renumeration. But will they keep sharing it? Will they keep making it easy to find?
If You Love Poetry, Share it With Others.
Trust that if you have something to share, if you find it valuable, others will find it valuable too. Give your fellow humans the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they are smarter than you realize. Maybe they are just as capable of knowing the difference between good and poor writing, or they would learn the difference if they saw more and better examples.
Things Are Changing for the Better
The media landscape is changing. In the past, a person who wanted to reach an audience needed to prove that they had “mass” appeal, meaning they would say things that the majority agreed with, so they could get represented by those with access and an audience to promote to.
Not so today.
Patton Oswalt has a great talk where he says There are No Gatekeepers Anymore. He says that today’s artists no longer need gatekeepers to give them permission, “Because of this,” he says, and takes out his phone. He points out the phone is now a home studio anybody can use to create and distribute their work.
And this is true. My husband, who is sixteen years older than I am, keeps reminding me that there was a time when there were only three networks—CBS, ABC and NBC. Now there are seemingly infinite numbers of channels and sources of media. The market is divided, and any artist can find their own “tribe.” They don’t have to pander to masses so much as they need to amass the people who will “get” them.
Be the Change You Want to See on Social Media
If there is something you want to see changed on social media, change it.
After Stevie Edwards gained traction with her vulnerable poems about mental health, she wanted to then write poems about pleasure and happiness. She founded Elysium Review to do just that.
In my interview with Rita Mookerjee, she told me that for years she gave up on poetry because people told her there was no market for the kind of work she was writing. It wasn’t until Dorothy Chan (also a fabulous poet we interviewed) encouraged her to write that she started to see how wrong those people had been. Now she’s the editor of Honey Lit, which gives voice to writers who have traditionally been marginalized.
As she says in our interview, nobody is paying us enough to keep quiet. Let me say it again in a bigger font.
Nobody is Paying Us Enough to Keep Quiet.
-Rita Mookerjee, author of False Offering
I think this is a great paradigm shift for all of us. It’s true that few will pay us to write, as Virginia Wolf noted in A Room of One’s Own, but at the same time, nobody is paying us not to write either. So why keep silent?
As Zora Neale Hurston said, “If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
People are on social media looking to connect. So connect with them!
People are on social media. People are lonely and bored and craving entertainment and connection. You can work to pull people away from their technical devices (and I support you if you do), but you can also use those technical devices to share, uplift, and even connect in an authentic way. And if you don’t get into their feeds, someone else will.
If those online have any interest in writing, poetry, the arts, whatever, social media will know it and give them what they crave. If the only people who are putting out writing on social media are the “bad” writers, then that’s what readers will see. If you want to see a more educated population of readers, then put out the content you want them to see, the content you wish were popular. It doesn’t have to be all your own writing; put out poems, pieces of writing, or writing tips you love and live by yourself. Put out writing that you wish had a wider readership. Put out the stuff you wish were popular and by doing that, you’ll make it just a little more popular.
Inspiration and Folks to Follow
I don’t think you need to share only positive posts online. At a time like this, and at all times, I think what’s important is that people speak honestly with one another. That means they may share poems or posts about grief, vulnerability, anger, sadness and fear as well as poems about optimism, hope, triumph and joy. In my upcoming posts on this topic I’ll share some more poets to follow. For the moment, I want to focus on just a few that I’ve been following who usually give me an emotional boost to see in my feed.
Grief to Light : The name says it all. This account posts poems that, to quote Sandra Cisneros transform “Grief to Light.”
Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin: Lyndsay Rush wanted to write and share more poems that incorporated humor into verse. She won me over with her poem, “She’s a Bit Much.”
Hannahrowrites: Has been sharing a lot of body-positive poems lately. They’re all counteracting negative messaging people get about showing off their “beach bod,” which I find really pertinent right now.
Joseph Fasano: Shares a lot of poems he’s written, and also the poems of kids he teaches. I get a lot of inspiration from his posts about how to bring poetry to young people and a lot of his work just gets me in the feels.
Kelly Grace Thomas - is currently running a challenge to write poems focused on Joy. Follow her on IG at the link above, and on substack here. The Creative Crossover.
Come share poetry with us at these upcoming events on Zoom!
Readings start at 2 pm, PST/ 5 pm, EST and last 90 mins.
Register for the July 21st Reading Here.
Love this!