"Poems Porn:" Abomination or Revolution?

by G. Mitchell Layton

Image via "Poems Porn" Facebook Page

Pornography: a word that tends to make people uncomfortable, a sort of taboo concept that can instantly cause nervous laughter or shock value. Typically we avoid the subject, but recently there has been a trend amongst social networking pages to add the word “porn” to their page names. With accounts like “food porn, “science porn,” or “word porn,” that use the word “porn” as a way to show that they’ll be posting the best and most appealing content of their subject, much like pornography. For example, the “Food Porn” page posts delicious pictures of gourmet dishes from the best chefs, which is enough to arouse the hungry and become porn-like to a borderline addicted foodie. The “Science Porn” page posts exotic images of nature and the universe to show the beauty of science in our world.  

The porn aspect of these pages is obviously exaggerated, because no one has the same reaction to a key lime pie as they would to hardcore pornography (at least I would hope not). However, the concept remains the same, and some of these pages on Facebook and Twitter have millions of followers.
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This brings me to my personal favorite of the “porn” pages: “Poems Porn.” It’s a bit misleading as, in my opinion, the page has nothing to do with poetry despite the description on their Facebook page that states, “Beautiful poems found online. We Claim no rights to the pics that are posted here.” Beauty is relative and up for interpretation, and apparently so is the concept of poetry. Where the “food porn” page at least posts pictures of tasty treats, the poems porn page has not posted one poem, or rather, none that seem like actual poems to me. They seem more like quotes or inspiring phrases. So if they’re not poems, and they’re definitely not porn, what are they?

Image via "Poems Porn" Facebook Page

I wish I had a simple answer to that, but instead I have two disappointing suggestions. The first is more straightforward (and the one I agree with more): the people who run the poems porn page have no clue what a poem is. They’ll settle for an out of context quote from a Bob Marley song or Joe Schmoe’s Facebook status before they post something from Dylan Thomas. Maybe my cynicism is showing. Regardless, it’s a fairly easy opinion to have.

The second possibility is a bit more involved: society’s view of poetry is changing. It may seem strange to assume, but what if the Poems Porn page is really a reflection of what everyday people think that poems are? I cannot be the first person to realize that they don’t post poetry, yet people seem convinced by their posts and they still have over two million likes on Facebook. I was dismayed to find that a few of my friends liked their page. Needless to say, it was enough for me to reconsider the foundation of our friendship. Can I really respect someone who doesn’t know the difference between a Marilyn Monroe quote about beauty and a poem that is actually intellectually beautiful? A more difficult question is what if these quotes disguised as poems were actually just… poems? What if society’s view of poetry has been watered down to what Poems Porn posts? Or even more terrifying, what if Poems Porn is literally changing the definition of poetry? I shudder at the thought.

If we want to find out whether Poems Porn is changing the definition of poetry, first we need to define poetry. Webster’s Dictionary defines poetry as “The writings of a poet.” What a wonderful help that is. Let’s try another. It also defines poetry as “writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm.” Now that’s a bit better. So what does “Poems Porn” post? I’ll describe it as clichéd phrases that are failed attempts to be profound and would be better suited as a sub-par Facebook status, or better yet, a thoughtless diary entry that deserves to be thrown away and forgotten. In between posting these atrocities, they post links to click bait articles like “Ariana Grande Had The Perfect Response To Accusations That She's Too Skinny,” or “This Woman Has a Weird Eating Disorder, and You Won’t Believe What She Eats,” or “Ten Reasons Why Your Lack of Poetry Knowledge Makes You Unforgivably Annoying…” Ok I made that last one up. The other two, however, are articles shared on their page, and there are many more like them.

Do I sound biased? I am. Here’s an example of a “poem” from their page: “at 16 or 21, nobody is worth stressing over. like move on, leave people behind. go find yourself, the world is yours. life goes on.” If you ignore the obvious comma splices and lack of capitalization, it’s still more of a statement that a poem. Want another example?: “I literally have to remind myself all the time, that being afraid of things going wrong isn’t the way to make things go right.” These two examples were posted as pictures on the page with black text over a plain white background. All “poems” are in quotes and seem more like something a Hallmark employee would get fired for writing rather than an actual poem. As I’m writing this, they currently have 2,137,042 likes on Facebook, and all that I’ve seen the page post are links to articles and whatever these quotes are.

If Poems Porn views poetry as the first definition in Webster’s Dictionary, they may very well be posting actual poems. If they view is as the second, I seriously doubt it. Is there any hint of a “concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language” in these posts? What about in one of their recent posts where they wrote “Stuck between “f**k it” & “what if?’” There doesn’t seem to be any concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in that, at least not imaginative. So, let’s take a look at a “real” poem to see what Poems Porn is missing. I mentioned Dylan Thomas before, and his classic poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” is a perfect example of a well-crafted poem. It is a villanelle, meaning that is contains nineteen lines made up of five groups of three stanzas, and a sixth stanza with four lines. Each line is ten syllables and the first and third lines repeat four times each throughout the poem. It also follows a rhyme scheme of ABA, ABA, ABA, ABA, ABA, ABAA. 

Image via "Poems Porn" Facebook Page

The first stanza reads, “Do not go gentle into that good night / Old age should burn and rave at close of day / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Not only did Dylan Thomas manage to fit his words into all these qualifications, but he crafted a meaningful poem with imaginative language that many poetry lovers have treasured for decades. It would surprise me if the creators of Poems Porn could even spell villanelle, let alone understand its meaning and create meaningful poetry with literary merit in the villanelle style. Thomas’s work is imaginative, but also deep and difficult to create. It isn’t a quote. It isn’t something conversational. It is art, and it takes effort.

​Poems Porn may post “Beautiful poems found online,” according to their Facebook page, but I can't say I agree. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and apparently so is poetry.