Is A ‘Takedown’ Of Young Women Poets Really So Brave?

The poetry world has been rent asunder by fierce arguments, in the past several weeks, over who deserves to be called a poet. Is it young women on Instagram and YouTube reading spoken word pieces? Is it Rupi Kaur, who came to fame with her “period photo” being banned from Instagram (and who has now sold a startlingly large number, inching toward a million, of copies of her poetry books)? Or is it the “serious poetry establishment” that takes them down? Says a publisher, “Poetry is most definitely not a broad church, but nor does it consist of 40 mutually exclusive sects. … One can worship at more than one altar.”