What the Web is saying about Drake's book of poems

When the announcement reached the world that Drake had published a book of poetry, the general reaction was something on the lines of: «Oh, now he's a poet too!» The book, which is actually authored by Kenza Samir and Aubrey Graham, does everything to leave one puzzled, as it consists of 168 pages where there is at most one or two lines of text. Even DJ Khaled, who is not exactly the reincarnation of Shakespeare, said in an already viral video: «The man wrote a book? He wrote a sentence!» Meanwhile, several online publications have already thrown themselves at the small volume: Highsnobiety compiled the most cringe-worthy quotes in the book - that is, almost all of them; Complex submitted the work to two real poets, Hanif Abdurraqib and Aris Kian, who clearly tried to be good but also said that these poems are not really poems because, in Abdurraquid's words, «they’re not even attempting to push against any unknown in order to offer something revelatory or at least somewhat beautiful». Words that, in themselves, are actually more poetic than the entire book. One Twitter user called the book «guaranteed comedy piñata», others likened it to the catchphrases going around on Tumblr and re-shared by teenagers while an unquantifiable minority of the Canadian rapper's fans said they will buy the book more out of support for their idol than out of sincere aesthetic appreciation.

Interestingly, however, the first reaction of acknowledged and, as it were, professional poets (mostly American) is still to make relativistic excuses by basically saying that, to avoid gatekeeping, one cannot venture to define what is and is not poetry even though, somewhat as with music, it only takes a pair of eyes and ears to distinguish good from bad poetry. It is also true that much has been done these days to confuse the public's tastes: especially in America, the mix of post-modern poetry and slam dunk of recent years, together with the rejection of all academicism considered oppressive even politically, has eliminated all parameters of objective judgment by opening the door to a type of poetry closer to Facebook motivational phrases than to the work of the great authors of the past. Making poetry is not about putting in head sentences, in short. Lately, then, even prominent pop singers of assured songwriting talent such as Florence Welch and Lana del Rey have published mixed collections of poems and lyrics from their own songs with less than iconic results. In a world where aesthetic judgment is arbitrary, this also becomes partisan. In other words, depending on the case, Drake's poems are masterpieces for fans and disasters for those who are not. On a much larger scale, this situation had arisen years ago, at the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden, whose real star had been Amanda Gorman with the poem The Hill We Climb - a poem about which judgments had immediately become politicized to the exclusion therefore of serene artistic discussion or evaluation.

What, then, will be the future of Drake's alleged poems that perhaps even Drake did not write? Seeing that they have already become a meme, one can reasonably assume that they will continue to float on the surface of the collective consciousness - perhaps despised, but not forgotten. In the words of P.T. Barnum, not surprisingly a circus entrepreneur: «There's no such thing as bad publicity» saying in short that as long as something is talked about, its success is assured. In this sense it doesn't really matter whether Drake's book is artistically sound or not - for now it has been successful.