Authenticity

“[On one end, you have] auto-tune that perfectly puts music into tune…which is sort of flawless and faultless. [In contrast, the other side] is clumsy, awkward, crude and unfinished things that we all actually like in the right context. 

The reason we like the Velvet Underground is not for their gloss. It's for their roughness. For the feeling we... See more

Swept up in the Instagramization of the 2010s, the contemporary poetry world saw an exaltation of ‘honesty’ as an aesthetic priority. Poetry not as craft, but as ‘outlet,’ with the goal not of developing ourselves and enriching our understanding of the world, but of sitting more comfortably with how we already were and what we already believed.

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learning how to write was very much like learning how to live: it all begins by listening to your inner voice and honoring it.

Living is as much a craft as is writing. There are rules and frameworks one can follow, but ultimately, one must define and cultivate one’s own style.

‘Do not try to be the best. Be the only.’ It helps me believe in a positive-sum world—where my success does not hinge on the failure of others, and I am not in a rat-race.” — Nishant Jain