I read a poetry book and then found out that there are many people online making videos about this book (together with other similar books). Basically people say that books like this one is not really poetry.
We are the generation you spent years overprotecting then threw to the wolves.
Food is not the enemy. Society is.
Be wary of the boys who only ever tell half-truth because they will only ever be half in love with you.
I am a tigress who has earned her softer-than-velvet strips. An ode to my stretch marks.
I will never be your expectations of me.
“The Princess Saves Herself In This One” by Amanda Lovelace
I guess I have to agree that it is not really poetry and probably it is not even free verse, but still a lot of people like it. So many people like it that it becomes a target, upon which people shoot their criticism.
Probably we can give it another name, not verse, not poem, not prose. Just random formless outbursts, the favorite form of expression so many women love and enjoy. I have to say when several women sit down and really talk about their life without paying attention to social approval, they talk in this kind of random outbursts, without form, without beginning or ending, without context, without demure (don’t know how to make “demure” into a noun).
It doesn’t have the nuance or complexity that a “real poem” is looking for. And the problem is that those “real poems” I’ve read have never expressed this kind of outbursts, which is so popular among women. Probably I should expand the range of my reading–it is possible that my limited range is the problem. I don’t know where to search or what to read.
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Haoyan Do 
The philosopher John Gray often uses an aphoristic style (eg in “Straw Dogs”). Though admittedly his aphorisms aren’t random – and many are extended into paragraphs. As to whether it is poetry … I guess if enough people start calling it “poetry” then it becomes “poetry”. Words can change their meaning over time. We would then need another word for what was previously considered “poetry”! That’s the snag.
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Thank you for the comment. Sorry for the absence. I’ve never read anything by John Gray. Straw dogs? Straw dogs vs. real dogs? So true that if enough people call it poetry, it is poetry. Now I think those can probably be called interesting quotes…
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No worries – I’ve been absent myself quite a bit too! I’ve abandoned quite a lot of draft posts recently because I feel I’m repeating myself!
Both the author and the title are confusing – because *another* John Gray wrote “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” and there is also a (violent) film with the title “Straw Dogs” – which has nothing to do with the book.
John Gray has a rather pessimistic (or realistic) philosophy loosely based on Taoism. In ancient Chinese culture (apparently) straw dogs were made as an offering to the gods and then immediately destroyed after the ceremony. This is how he sees human beings. The universe doesn’t care about us. He emphatically isn’t a humanist!
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I guess poetry is a matter of subjective opinion. Some cases there needs to be a pattern, sometimes there doesn’t need to be one.
I sorta think of it how European paintings tend to be very detailed and clear what the painter wants to paint, while Chinese painters use a few brush strokes to paint an impression of the subject.
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Yes, we are have our own subjective opinion about poetry. And yes just an impression of a poem is good enough for me. Or just something we enjoy reading.
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Stream of consciousness, I think, is what this is called.
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Thank you for your comment. Yes, I have read a bit about stream of consciousness. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I don’t. I guess I don’t like the older ones from Virginia Woolf but the new ones are much better.
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