in defense of kristen stewart's poetry

kristen stewart wrote a poem and recently shared it with a magazine and the internet went and did what it does best, destroy things with words. anonymous vitriol aimed at her poetic attempts can be googled easily. it's what we do. a celebrity tries something new, funky, different and we trash it. bloggers put on their know-it-all hats and tear her poem to shreds... cuz y'know, they were all reviewing poems before this ever happened so they know best what makes for good or bad poetry.

i'm of the opinion that most of the hate towards her poem is coming from people who don't know shit about poetry. they never reviewed a poem, wrote a poem, can't even give you a solid answer if you ask them the question, "what's your favorite poem?" if you're not into poetry at all, then you pretty much eliminate yourself from having any right at all to criticize anyone else's attempts at it cuz at this point, kristen stewart has proven that she knows more about poetry than you do just by trying to write one herself. you need to put your hate for 'twilight,' or whatever else it might be that she did that bothers you, and put it aside. you're not an expert at poetry, you're just an expert at not liking kristen stewart.

and applaud yourself if you own that expertise proudly. it must be great to focus your disdain at an actress in a world filled with real villains. whatever your grudge may be against her, is it so unbearable that you're proud to be an anti-fan, a full fledged hater, a person who decides to use their tiny little corner of the internet to crap on any attempt she makes at anything ever?

the idea of some actress writing poetry doesn't hurt you in any personal way. you have a deeper issue that needs to be explored. maybe you hate her acting and that's gotta suck because it looks like the hollywood market disagrees with you. it's gotta burn that she gets paid millions of dollars to do something that annoys you personally. go ahead, keep on bloggin', i'm sure hollywood will put out a memo any day now saying you were right all along.

and maybe you just happen to be some kind of authority on poetry and you read it and genuinely didn't like it and to that i say, "good to be you."  not liking stuff is important. i don't like eggplant, i don't care how your grandma prepares it. but why do you need to write something tearing it apart and put it out in the world? you are a disservice to any and all forms of creativity and art.

even if her poem wasn't up to your standards, at least she tried. trying is important. people need to try things... especially creative things. the world needs more art. you shitting on art is the enemy of art. someone somewhere will read your harsh assessment of her attempt at branching out and expressing herself in different ways and think to themselves, "fuck, i don't wanna try to write poetry ever. i'll probably suck at it which will lead to people saying mean things."

what we should be doing is encouraging more poetry, more writing, more expression. when you shut it down on your choice of public forum, you're sending a message that if you're gonna try at all, it better be good. but what you fail to realize is that when it comes to most, if not all, forms of art, people need to write, paint, create sucky stuff first to get to the goods. the best artists all created something that sucked along the way (not that i'm saying her poem sucked, but if that's your opinion, i'm not here to wrestle that away from you).

besides, poetry is totally subjective. there is no universal, 'good,' or, 'bad.' it's just what YOU like and what YOU don't like. it's a personal preference and you can't force your artistic tastes onto other people because we're all unique individuals and the world would be a totally boring place if we all were constantly in agreement with what you found to be good and bad.

odds are that if you had something harsh to say about her poem (or any poem for that matter, this is a universal thing that goes way beyond kristen stewart), then you're probably just some miser who has to share their displeasure with the rest of the world cuz y'know, misery loves company. that's why trashing things is such a popular past time on the internet. you're kinda part of the problem and the rest of us are waiting with baited breath for your first shitty attempt at poetry so we can all say, "hey, not so bad. keep at it."