What is Poetry? (Yo es Nosotrxs)

  1. Poetry is a collective and public art because imperceptibly but obstinately pushes the uses and limits of the common language: of what can be thought, said and felt with words.
  2. Poetry is a technology of the word and a pedagogy of attention. Its evil twin, advertising, asks us to buy what we do not need, what we cannot afford, what is not good for us to desire. Above all, it tries to persuade us that acquiring and accumulating objects is important, beautiful, pleasurable.
  3. Poetry is not irrelevant. It is quite the opposite: it is catchy. That is why it catches our attention and memory.
  4. In an age that invented an economy of fragmentation, extraction and capitalization of attention, poetry has everything to say.
  5. Because if it works, a poem sabotages the naturalized associations and the automatisms of attention. That is why it is not true that you have to concentrate: the poem captures you and shakes you at the same time.
  6. Poetry can be influential. Let’s make influencers recite poetry. Let’s have celebrities read poetry aloud. Let’s redistribute symbolic capital, which is less inaccessible than financial capital. Let’s hack attention.
  7. Poetry is spectacular. And it can also be a show —and even a celebrity— in itself.
  8. Poetry teaches how to read, and not just poetry, but anything.
  9. Poetry is poems, not poets. Which is the same as saying: we can all be poets if we like words.
  10. Poetry is for all audiences: it does not underestimate anyone.
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EZEQUIEL ZAIDENWERG
EZEQUIEL ZAIDENWERG
Ezequiel Zaidenwerg (Buenos Aires, 1981). Poet and translator. He is the author of Doxa (Vox, 2007), La lírica está muerta (Vox, 2011), among others. His poems have been translated into several languages and he is recognized for his good command of prosody and classical metrics. His translation works have been published in books such as Ben Lerner. Doppler Elegies (Kriller71, 2015) and in the author's own blog. He currently lives in New York.

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