Lowercase "i" poetry is stealing your life-force

You are not a victim of your own life

There is a certain kind of sad girl poetry that was unleashed upon the world some time in the 2010s. It comes with a lower case “i” and zero consideration for rhyme or meter. These poets hit the indent button on the most banal and self-absorbed ideas and believe they have done something earth shatteringly profound by admitting in fifteen three-word lines that they had to help their mom with the dishes.

Reading this kind of poetry makes you invent and exaggerate the grievances in your own life. It is always a form of complaint against someone or something and makes the reader into a victim of their mother, their father, being the eldest daughter, their ex boyfriend, the economy, their own children! But suffering has been written about by great poets before. What makes their poetry about human suffering so different? It’s very simple once you see it.