I just read an article on The WEIGHT Journal and I didn’t like it one bit. No idea what I was googling (usual for me), but I came upon a piece talking about poetry format and how center-formatted poems are considered written by amateur poets and a lot of editors will reject these poems without even reading them. Like. . .what? Center-formatted poems are considered outdated and modernist or “traditional,” which are eras we are not currently in, although I personally think the eras need to be updated since “modernist” means late 1800s to mid-1900s; I guess we’re in modern (no -ist)/contemporary now. That may be a lie; I don’t really pay attention to poetic eras and movements. I just read what I like, but I digress.
I have been center-formatting poems since I started writing them back when I owned only notebooks, then briefly on a word processor that took 3-1/2″ floppies. It’s been a while, to say the least. I think it looks better to center them and makes them easier to read, and I like the shape of the poem if each line has a different word count or a graduated word count. I have two or three non-centered poems that were intentional and aesthetically pleasing to me. That’s three out of 50+.
Rupi Kaur, for one, is all over the place with her intentional formatting. One of her poems is in a diamond format meant to represent a woman’s vagina. For one to be so arrogant as to say they refuse to read a poet’s work due to formatting is downright blasphemous and ignorant to me. It’s like, “I’m sorry, you’re an outright wordsmith, but I could not tolerate looking at your words in the center of my screen. Good luck with your endeavors.” How can you call yourself an editor or poet or professional, making statements like that? Anyway, it pissed me off and set my PDA (pathological demand avoidance) into overdrive, obviously.
So, I was mega-banned from Reddit because of an immature left-wingnut in a sub and that doesn’t bode well for my PDA, either. They made some BS statement about how the alt-right isn’t welcome in the sub they moderate, and I asked if they had the same rule for the alt-left, so I was banned from that sub (an “inclusive” ADHD sub, btw). I’m neither alt-right nor alt-left, but the hypocritical bigotry infuriates me and my elevated sense of equality and justice. I told Adam about being banned from the sub for saying what I did, so he went to that sub and asked the same question, and that got me permanently mega-banned via fingerprinting, which means the entire household is banned from Reddit. RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria), come join PDA! It’s even more infuriating that I care and have been crying about it and I wish I didn’t and haven’t been.
To combat my hermitness, I’ve joined Tumblr, and I don’t know what to think of it. It doesn’t seem to be my cup of tea so far, but I am not much of a Facebook user and I don’t like X/Twitter. Instagram is pretty boring to me. I just get so bored not having anyone to talk to or relate to. I feel invisible 99% of the time in life and Reddit has ferociously reinforced that. Even my service dog-in-training prefers to be with Adam. How can one ignore that?
Cari R Esta 