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Rehash

Rupi Kaur

Rehash

Rehash

Society & Culture

4.5611 Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2024

⏱️ 90 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Oscar Wilde once said, “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.” But if that's the case, how do we explain Rupi Kaur? Ever since she came on the scene a decade ago, Rupi has seen equal measures of praise and scrutiny. And, youth and gender considered, it’s hard not to feel that the backlash to her work is yet another instance of people hating anything that’s popular. However, in this episode, Hannah and Maia are joined by special guest, poet Phoebe VanDusen, to peer behind the veil of Rupi's persona and ask some pressing questions. What exactly irks people about her work? Does all art need to be democratized? What is the line between anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism? And perhaps the most puzzling of all: is poetry something anyone can do? Tangent includes: Maia’s shameless love of Nickelback. 


Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:

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Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:

⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic


Poets mentioned by Phoebe:

Tommy Pico

Kim Hyesoon

Etel Adnan

Timmy Straw

Frank O'Hara

Alice Notley


Ocean Vuong - "Aubade with Burning City":

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56769/aubade-with-burning-city


SOURCES:

Javon Johnson, Killing Poetry: Blackness and the Making of Slam and Spoken Word Communities, Rutgers (2017).


Maria Manning, “Crafting Authenticity: Reality, Storytelling, and Female Self-Representation through Instapoetry” Storytelling, Self, Society,  Vol. 16, No. 2 (2020).


Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” (1985).


Miski Omar, “Whether voice of a generation or queen of cringe, Rupi Kaur was a gateway to the world of poetry” The Guardian (2024).


Soraya Roberts, “No Filter” The Baffler (2018).


Rebecca Watts, “The Cult of the Noble Amateur” PN Review, vol.44 (3) (2018).

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

girl and we're back new season baby hell yeah we were so happy with our last season

0:07.9

i think it went really well maybe it was our best season yet maybe it's our best season ever and it can

0:13.8

only go downhill from here sometimes when you know you're peeking in the middle of peeking it's concerning

0:18.2

that's me right now at age 27 yeah it. It can only get worse and worse and worse. Being a woman in her like mid to late 20s really is being like, okay, now this is the peak. Oh no, this is the peak. Okay, now this is the peak. And then you're constantly feeling like you're not meeting the peak and that you actually suck. But then in 20, 30 years, we're going to look back

0:39.2

and be like, wow, my life was so awesome. Yeah, you kind of spend like most of your 20s being like,

0:44.1

I'm not an adult yet. I'm not a grown up. I'm just a baby. I'm not a good. Yes. And then you

0:51.4

hit your late 20s and you're like, oh, my life is over and I have no value

0:58.3

when I'm old and whatever.

1:01.7

So then I hear when you hit your early 30s, you're like, well, the sun starts again, baby.

1:05.7

Yeah, exactly.

1:07.7

So that's us and that's what we feel about last season. But we're hoping that this season is even better. Bigger, better. We've got guests on this season. We've got experts. We've got good times. We're talking about art this season. I know, which I feel like we both are quite versed in, at least. Some of them.

1:30.2

Having me, having dabbled in every art growing up and being good at like none of them.

1:34.7

I was definitely like, I'll try a little bit of this, try a little bit of that kind of kid.

1:39.4

I'm not a ballerina. It didn't work out. I'm not, um...

1:43.2

It didn't work out for me. I'm not in an improv troupe. It didn't work out. I'm not, um, it didn't work out. I'm not in an improv troupe. It didn't work

1:46.4

out. But I'm, um, uh, an appreciator of the arts. I just love that the barometer for whether

1:53.4

or not you succeeded is it, whether or not you're in an improv troupe. Well, maybe like not in the

1:58.5

classical terms of success, but like in a kind of more meaningful way, yes. I'll be real, though. Our friend Emma's in an improv troupe. She truly, she blows my mind every time we go to see her. Like, it really is spectacular. Because you know when you go see someone you know do comedy and you're like, oh, God, am I going to have to pretend to laugh? Such a relief when you watch someone do comedy and you're like, this is actually funny.

2:19.9

Yeah, yeah, it I going to have to pretend to laugh? Such a relief when you watch someone do comedy and you're like, this is actually funny. Yeah, yeah, it's nice to know, which I think our friends in comedy are good at what they do. Good for you guys. But back to us being bad at all art. Maybe we're both mediocre at every art form. Like, I can play the cello. Can I play it well? Like, absolutely not. I can dance. Can I dance well? Like, absolutely not, even though I did it for 14 years. You can dance better than me. That is, like, sad. That shouldn't be the test of how good I am at dancing. I dedicated 14 years to that. And I, my barometer is, oh, I'm better than my friends, I guess. Well, that is a feat.

2:52.0

You always want, like, you don't want to be an incredible dancer on the dance floor because it's like, okay, what's that about? It's a little suspicious. But if you're, like, a medium, just, like, good dancer, no one has to know you to dance for 14 years. They just have to know that, like, you're naturally good. Well, unfortunately, my greatest fantasy growing up was like, oh, and then I'm going to be forced to dance in front of all my like classmates and they're going to see how talented I am and they're going to be blown away and all the boys are going to fall in love with me. So like I do want to kind of blow. And you're only 27. There's so much time for that. I was supposed to be like I do really want to blow ass on the day on the floor. And there's so much time for that. I was about to be like I do really want to blow ass on the floor.

3:25.2

And there's so much time for that, too.

3:29.2

Incontinence is the fantasy.

...

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