#why gabbie hanna's poems are bad | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jonnyblackwrites · 4 years

Text

A Controversial, but Fair Essay on Gabbie Hanna’s Poetry That Doesn’t Completely Shit on Her Writing

So I just finished listening to her youtube video where she addresses this topic. When I first saw her poems, I could see what everyone was talking about: her poems are simple, full of puns that seem to masquerade as a function of “depth”, with simple, easy to understand language juxtaposed with themes of growing up and trauma. She says that her influences include Shel Silverstein, Bo Burnham and William Williams, including his famous poem This is Just to Say.

(prepare thyself reader, this is a quick 2k analysis. I’ve included GOOD poetry recs at the end!)

She goes on to say that what drew her to these poems was there charm- Shel Silverstein’s works were meant for children, and they are easy to interpret- and could be read from the perspective of both an adult and child. As a child reading Where the Sidewalk Ends, I enjoyed the illustrations and the rhyming nature of these poems. I’m sure Gabbie Hanna did as well. Hearing her talk about these inspirations and what she wanted to do with her own poems, it’s clear that she was aiming for each piece to harken back to the whimsy and innocence of childhood, while addressing more adult topics.

I think that Gabbie Hanna missed the mark. She admits that some of the poems in her book were rushed and this makes me question if and where she ever got any peer feedback from her pieces. I also wonder if Gabbie has ever taken any writing classes or poetry workshops, but I am doubtful. The big difference between This is Just to Say and, lets say, her poem Chivalry is clear. Here is This is Just to Say:

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold.

So much has already been said about this poem. But the biggest thing to take away here, is that Williams clearly put thought into syntax, imagery, rhythm and rhyme. You will notice that this piece doesn’t exactly rhyme, but it slant rhymes. Rhyming has become less of a marker for poetry recently, mostly because I think it makes people think of nursery rhymes or songs and traditional, older forms of poetry, and some poets don’t want that connotation. This may surprise some, but poetry is an ever evolving art form; poets are always playing with experimentation in their work. Here, imagery and the five senses make This is Just to Say great. Up until the last stanza, we don’t really get anything that makes us feel a physical sensation until we get to “so sweet/ and so cold”. This is where the impact of the poem lies. This is the climax of this poem. Every word before it is intentionally abstract, while sweet and cold are in comparison, concrete images and sensual images. This is why we can almost taste the plums the author is talking about at the end of the poem.

Let’s look at a poem I picked at random from Gabbie Hanna’s book, CHIVALRY:

I’m not some no-brained bimbo

and i’m not some helpless girl

i am fucking remarkable

and i deserve the world.

i don’t need you to open my door,

but the gesture would be nice.

i don’t need you to buy my meal;

the offer would suffice.

i don’t need to be taken care of,

but it’d be cool to know you care.

i’m a holographic charizard

highly desired and rare.

yo, i even drop pokemon references

‘cause i’m fuckin dope as shit.

i’m good with just me, i don’t need you

not even a tiny bit.

Let me address what I like about this poem first. Gabbie knows what she wants to do- she utilizes rhyming and repetition to make this an easy flowing read. She knows that a lower-case “i” shows that despite what she may be claiming in the poem “i don’t need you/ not even a tiny bit”, the narrator does not think highly of themselves— perhaps the narrator desperately needs the “you” addressed, but is not confidant enough to ask for their friendship/ relationship. The narrator is contradicting themselves, showing a low self-esteem, and maybe crying for help. This juxtaposed with the fun rhyming tone of the piece and the mention of pokémon succesfully gets this point across.

However, this poem seems to focus on utilizing these elements of craft only. Gabbie could enhance the reader experience by adding more concrete imagery: why type of meal? How helpless of a girl? These are instances where Gabbie could help the reader connect to the speaker, and she doesn’t do so. We could also argue that she’s emulating This is Just to Say by only including one concrete and colorful image, but I will address this further down.

Additionally, this narrator could be anyone. I could imagine anybody saying this, of any gender. Perhaps Gabbie did this intentionally- the more vague a narrator is, the more it could apply to anyone— the average teen/adult could connect to this poem. However, this gives the poem a generic quality. Perhaps others would like to connect to this narrator more, and get a better sense of who the narrator is. Also let me address why I keep using “narrator” instead of “Gabbie”. It’s a force of habit for me (that I got from poetry courses in college) to assume that the narrator of the poem and the author of the poem may not always be the same person. I think in this situation, these poems are undoubtedly from Gabbi’s perspective, but to remain neutral just in case, I will continue to use “narrator”.

Something I’d also like to address is the matter of rhyming in the current poetry world. Many journals have gone so far as to say “we do not accept rhyming poems” in their submission guidelines. Not all, but some. People who just start out writing poetry believe that poems must rhyme to be considered poetry at all, but when you take your first poetry class in high school or college, you quickly realize that this is not the case. Here, Gabbie uses a simple end rhyme scheme to evoke poetry like Silverstein and childhood memories of reading poetry, nursery rhymes, etc. But I think to those who have been reading poetry for a long time, teaching it, or reading submissions for their journal, the mark of a novice poet is that everything rhymes, sometimes at the sake of using a better word in its place that doesn’t rhyme. I think rhyme has its place in poetry, but it can be overused. Since most of Gabbie Hanna’s poems do rhyme, it’s easy to see someone getting “rhyme fatigue” while reading. Another negative effect of rhyming is that the reader will begin to anticipate the rhyme- this can cause the reader to skip lines entirely, and focus solely on the rhyme scheme, rather than focusing on the meaning of the poem. A piece that harkens back to childhood and uses rhyme well, in my opinion, is This Be the Verse by Phillip Larkin:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself.

I think the big difference between this and Gabbie Hanna’s poem is that it starts off strong right away with “They fuck you up, your mum and dad”. The condescending tone is always there right from the start, and the rhyming is more of a surprise than an expectation throughout- the line “it deepens like a coastal shelf” brings new imagery and meaning to the poem by veering off into another subject. This enhances the surprise.

I’d also like to address cliche’s. The cliche’s present in CHIVALRY are “I deserve the world” and “I don’t need you to open my door”. These are easy to understand from a readers point of view, but often, cliche’s offer nothing new and exciting to the reader. They are easy to skip over and ignore. These add to the poems generic atmosphere.

Let’s talk about the pieces title itself: CHIVALRY. When we read this poem with the title in context, we get a strange disconnect. The poem is clearly about a girl who says she doesn’t need chivalrous acts from a friend or partner, and doesn’t need someone because they are “good with just me”. But the subtext of the piece is less about chivalry and more about self-esteem or a willingness to be loved. The piece has changed meaning two thirds of the way down. I think the title is too obvious and misleading, and gives the reader the wrong idea about what the poem is trying to say. In essence, the piece is named after a facet of the relationship between the narrator and other person, rather than the root of what the poem is trying to convey.

The pokémon references add color to this piece, and it is the only place this piece has any kind of concrete imagery. In the This is Just to Say the sweet and cold plum imagery is the very last line, heightening them. In CHIVALRY, they’re near the middle of the piece. Thus, the longer ending reduces the color and lasting effect of “holographic charizard”.

Overall, I think Gabbie Hanna could benefit from workshopping her poems and getting peer feedback from other poets, in addition to reading poetry that isn’t thirty plus years old. I don’t know if she already does this, but judging from her poems, I can only assume that she hasn’t. At the very least, she should avoid rushing to get poems out before they are due.

Gabbie Hanna is a novice poet who put her poems out into the world and got a greater amount of backlash than any novice poet usually does in a workshop or classroom setting. When in the classroom, there is such a thing as Critique Etiquette. Critique for poems are give honestly and gently, never in a harsh or mean way. Fellow poets point out possible interpretations of work, or possible unwanted connotations of sometimes, even a simple word at the end of the line. In addition, poets in the classroom are exposed to modern poets that are creating new and exciting work that is often published in highly esteemed magazines- reading the best of todays poetry. Gabbi Hanna’s work seemingly got published without peer review, and the quality of it was clear to those who read it. That being said, I do think that people who read and love Gabbie Hanna’s work do connect with it— no doubt because these poems are designed to be as generic as possible, so that others may see themselves in the words.This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I believe her work appeals best to newcomers to poetry, people who maybe have only ever read works from Shel Silverstein or Edgar Allen Poe. This can be a blessing and a shame. There are many good poets out there, that aren’t getting published because they don’t have youtube channels or brand collaborations, and they are just plain hard to find. However, Gabbie Hanna has opened the door for many would-be poetry readers, and has sparked a love for the art of poetry in them. Hopefully, this love leads them to become wider read, and to seek out more poetry from a multiple of authors to read.

I decided that I’d also like to include some published poetry from poets that are from a range of different backgrounds. Go forth and read!

POETRY THAT DOESN'T SUCK: Sonya Vatomsky's Salt is for Curing- poems by a non-binary poet that focus on themes of femininity, Russian food, Russian folklore and identity. Review Purchase

Danez Smith- A black, queer, non-binary and HIV positive writer. A poem I really like of theirs is "Dinosaurs in the Hood" is a great poem that I personally love.

Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric. This book contains poems that focus on the Black experience in America. Excerpt from the book here

Khadijah Queen's I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men and What I Had On. This collection features conversational poems that focus on the narrators encounters with famous men in relation to what the narrator was wearing at the time. A piece that centers around the question "Well, what were you wearing?". Read two poems from the book Here.

Fatimah Ashgar's IF THEY COME FOR US. Poems by a Pakistani-Kashmiri-American. These poems focus on race and identity. One of my favorites takes the form of a bingo card, titled Microagression Bingo (read here and two other poems from the book). As a poc myself, I was nodding along to every line, thinking "Yup. I've been through that too."

Tommy Pico is an indiginous poet, and Junk is a book length poem of couplets that uses modern, fast, text style language. From the Tin House website: "The third book in Tommy Pico’s Teebs trilogy, Junk is a breakup poem in couplets: ice floe and hot lava, a tribute to Janet Jackson and nacho cheese. In the static that follows the loss of a job or an apartment or a boyfriend, what can you grab onto for orientation?" Read an excerpt Here.

I can assure you that none of these read like Rupi Kaur, Gabbie Hanna, or Atticus. These are serious poets that have spent years honing their form, submitting to journals-- they did the work. And it shows in the quality of their writing.

While I'm not a fan of Atticus and Rupi Kaur and Gabbie Hanna, I can appreciate that they've appealed to people who may have never read a poem before. Now those people have a newfound love for poetry, and a hunger for more. Hopefully, those people will seek out other poets and expand their knowledge and repertoire of current poets, maybe lesser known poets that do amazing work.

8 notes · View notes