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A poetry professor critiques celebrity poets, from James Franco to Florence Welch

Flirty: James Franco: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for IFP
Flirty: James Franco: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for IFP

Ah, the celebrity poetry collection. While they aren’t as pervasive as the celebrity fragrance or (especially recently) the celebrity make-up line, plenty of artistes have chosen to wax lyrical in published verse.

From ‘America’s most famous poetry geek’ James Franco through to former Disney star Bella Thorne, plenty of celebrities have angsty stanzas they’re desperate to get off their chests - and this National Poetry Day, we’re going to indulge them.

James Franco (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for IFP)
James Franco (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for IFP)

We drafted in Tiffany Atkinson, award-winning poet and Professor of Creative Writing (Poetry) at UEA, to give her own expert opinion on the work of ten celebrities - but so Tiffany could stay as neutral as possible we did not reveal which celebrity had written each poem.

So who has a bright future in poetry and who should probably stick to their day job? Here are her thoughts.

The Good

Florence Welch

(Instagram / @florence)
(Instagram / @florence)

Singer Florence Welch's turn to poetry makes sense - she penned a collection called Useless Magic in 2018.

The compilation of lyrics, photography and her own poetry was a different type of challenge for Welch, who had help from Nick Cave, poet Yrsa Daley-Ward and others.

She also collaborated with Gucci on a luxurious floral cover for a limited edition run of Useless Magic. Her poem, American Mother, is one of the best of the collection:

The poem: American Mother

Crafted from Renaissance stone

Mostly these days I write poetry on my phone.

I wish I had more of your staunch American character,

Strong, bold, and unflinching, like the desert, or a New York

skyscraper.

But I am more like the English weather

Unpredictable and ever changing,

Prone to downpours.

Battered by sudden winds - thin-skinned, eye-bagged and

always cold,

Proud and leaking.

Did you think you would give birth to such an English

creature,

With your warm American blood?

I just found a picture of me

Drunk in a corridor with Liza Minnelli,

Waiting for Lady Gaga to go on stage.

I make songs to tie people to me,

With a ribbon of fantasy around their necks

Such a beautiful bow

That I hold in my fist.

And will not let go.

Tiffany’s thoughts:

“The first stanza here has a dangling modifier that doesn’t strictly make sense – it implies that the speaker is crafted from Renaissance stone; a startling image but one that doesn’t add up with writing poetry on a phone.

“I would begin the poem with the second stanza – the simile that compares American character with English through weather is great – ‘prone to downpours’ is a terrific phrase. And I love the Liza Minnelli stanza – such a deft and unexpected glimpse into a celebrity life.”

Mary Lambert

(Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)
(Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)

Singer Mary Lambert, who has previously worked with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, is an accomplished poet who takes no prisoners - not even herself.

In her collection Shame is an Ocean I Swim Across, she delved into her relationship with sexual assault, mental illness and body acceptance with blistering honesty; most notably in her poem ‘If Bodies are a Speaking Vessel for God Then this is a Poetic Conversation We Had When You Raped Me.’

[Content warning - sexual assault is mentioned in this poem]

The poem: If Bodies Are Speaking Vessels For God, Then This Is a Poetic Conversation We Had While You Raped Me

Tiffany’s thoughts:

“I think this is really two separate poems, both powerful but together rather confusing, and the ingenious title doesn’t really help – it makes the reader (well this one anyway) feel a bit stupid from the get-go.

“The first stanza /poem is a bold and unflinching examination of how war trauma damages personal relationships – some brilliant images ‘you are a thing with a mouth’ and ‘my body is a burning home’ – the whole thing haunted me a bit after reading (in a good way). The second part, the address from God, is really imaginative and strange – the last six lines especially.”

Viggo Mortensen

(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

As an actor Viggo Mortensen has played many roles, but poetry is one of his greatest passions. Mortensen runs his own small poetry house called Perceval Press and publishes a number of poets, including his own work. Writing in both English and Spanish, he has several collections that have been published over the years.

While copies of his first collection Ten Last Night are hard to come by, one of its poems Secrets has been shared widely online.

It includes lines such as: “Maybe the fish will eat our words / maybe lost or spurned loves / will help deep-sea feathery green plants grow.”

His work matured as the years went by and in 2003, he wrote a poem called ‘Back to Babylon’ in his book Twilight of Empire: Responses to Occupation - responding to the US invasion of Iraq. He later performed it on air for Democracy Now!

The poem: Back to Babylon

The text can also be read here.

Tiffany’s thoughts:

“This poetic prose has undeniable power. The use of the imperative mode ‘Accept and forget’, ‘pay at the window’ is forceful and aptly reminiscent of military orders. There are many lovely phrases and images here - ‘We make bad ghosts’, ‘grandmothers unburdening clotheslines at twilight’, ‘Night anywhere is home’.

“At times it strives too hard to make its significance felt, relying too much on adjectives - ‘prejudiced, heedless, modest, time-rubbed’ etc. and abstract nouns – ‘incantations’, ‘slaughter’. A strong image or perception should be able to stand by itself, without wordy explanation.”

“The last line is a case in point – it would be stronger and more suggestive if it ended at ‘turning inward’.”

James Franco

(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

At one point, you couldn’t get people to shut up about James Franco and his poetry.

Franco, who decided to go back to school to get an M.F.A. in poetry at Columbia University, is a published poet with a chapbook called Strongest of the Litter (featuring a still of him in character from Spring Breakers).

He was eventually commissioned by Yahoo! News to write a poem (and read it on camera) about the Obama inauguration titled ‘Obama in Asheville’, included below.

His first collection Directing Herbert White was released to poor reviews. The Telegraph gave it a scathing one star, while the New York Times wrote of his 65 poem exhibit James Franco: New Film Stills that he “should just stick to acting. He remains embarrassingly clueless when it comes to art.”

At the very least, Franco is deeply passionate and genuine about his art and another New York Times review called his collection not ‘entirely bad.’

Franco also played one of the most famed American poets of all time onscreen - Allen Ginsberg.

The poem: Obama in Asheville

[This poem was too long so we have only shared an excerpt, though Tiffany was given the full poem, which can be watched or read here.]

I met Obama once, in D.C., the Correspondents’ Dinner.

I was the guest of Vanity Fair, guided through D.C. by the wife

Of Christopher Hitchens, when he was alive. We went to Hitch’s place,

He had books from floor to ceiling, and said he had read

To Borges, when he was blind, Old Icelandic Eddas—

Then we waited in a private room with the likes of Tom Cruise,

And Katie Holmes, and Claire Danes. When Obama entered

The crowd converged. Finally, I got to shake his hand,

He knew me from Spider-Man. I asked him for advice,

I was scheduled to give the commencement speech at UCLA

And there were some undergraduate knockers against me;

He had been denied the usual honorary degree by Arizona Stat

Because he hadn’t accomplished enough, so I wondered

How he dealt with detractors. He smiled his smile and said,

“Humor.” Well he’s damn right, and I wonder how much

That stand-up comedian is laughing in the face

Of this big country

Tiffany’s thoughts:

“This is interesting because it’s essentially about the writer’s failure to write the piece about Obama he was commissioned to write. There is a long and ironic tradition of poems about being ‘unable to write’.

“This one has a chatty anecdotal tone like the New York poet Frank O’Hara, and like O’Hara is full of name-dropping, conveying a world of influential people of which the writer admits he is one (an unusual perspective to be able to take) – and it lays clues so the reader is bound to be thinking ‘who is this speaking? – I am not sure if this constitutes a distraction or an interesting mystery!

“Either way, the final stanzas do find a way of honoring Obama in the speaker’s own terms, while at the same time (ironically?) reminding us of the narcissism expected of actors: ‘I’d win the Academy Award if I just captured that’. It’s fluent and confident and clever."

In an aside, she also added, “‘Undergraduate knockers’?! I’m guessing that means something different in US English?”

The Meh

Alicia Keys

(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

Singer Alicia Keys is a master at off-the-cuff poetics whenever she speaks, but she also penned some full poems for her collection Tears for Water.

Combining her song lyrics and poetry, she also performed one of her “FAVORITE poems” P.O.W. (Prisoner of Words) on Def Poetry - a popular poetry and rap show.

Playing on the similarity of “piece” and “peace” as well as drawing on military imagery, she talked about feeling held hostage by language.

The performance prompted a standing ovation - something she also got later at the VMAs when she recited a poem that would become her song Holy War; inspired by Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

The poem: P.O.W.

Tiffany’s thoughts:

“This poem is an extended metaphor – the speaker is a ‘prisoner’ of their feelings, and each stanza explores another angle of this association. The point of a metaphor is to make something familiar (eg. loneliness) feel new and surprising.

“It’s difficult to keep an extended metaphor going without falling into well-worn patterns of thinking: you have to push the idea into fresh territory and I am not sure this one says anything new about either feelings or imprisonment - both are treated in very familiar terms. But it is well-shaped and focused.

“I couldn’t help wanting this prisoner to break free a little, and to find a way to say some of the things they wanted to say! It could have been The Great Escape! Poems, after all, should contain an element of risk.”

Leonard Nimoy

(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

Star Trek actor Leonardo Nimoy is one of the oldest poets on this list and unfortunately, doesn’t bring his wealth of experience with that.

Sparse and simple, his work tends to fall flat with one Goodreads user writing the scathing review, “I love Leonard Nimoy as an actor. But this book is a great example of what happens when people who are famous for doing something other than poetry publish a book of poetry in the early 1970s.”

He published two collections of poetry - one called A Lifetime of Live: Poems on the Passages of Life and another called Come Be With Me.

The poem: If Love Can Be

If love can be withdrawn

It never was

My love for you is not a gift

To you

It is a gift

To me.

Tiffany’s thoughts:

“I like the epigrammatic brevity of this poem: it’s a form beloved of Instapoets like Rupi Kaur, little fragments of reflection conveyed in simple, unfussy language.

“The danger is that they can seem trite and off-the-peg, and in this respect, the first couplet is a bit slack, but the second stanza has a lovely ‘turn’ – a moment of surprise and affirmation. I’d lose the first stanza!”

Tupac

Tupac's poetry collection
Tupac's poetry collection

Rapper Tupac might best be known for his music, but his poetry showed a different and much softer side to him.

His works were published in a collection called The Rose That Grew From Concrete and the rapper himself said he “started off with poetry”, which formed the foundation for his rap verse.

Written between the ages of 18 and 19, it was published after his death in 1996 with a foreword from author Nikki Giovanni and a preface by his mother Afeni Shakur.

From a poem dedicated to Jada Pinkett Smith to lines such as “excuse me but Lady Liberty needs glasses/And so does Mrs Justice by her side/Both the broads R blind as bats/Stumbling thru the system”, it also included the eponymous poem below.

The poem: The Rose That Grew From Concrete

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature’s law is wrong it learned to walk without having feet.

Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.

Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared.

Tiffany’s thoughts:

“This poem uses a well-worn poetic trope, the rose, and juxtaposes it nicely with concrete, where we wouldn’t expect a rose to grow, suggesting resilience and triumph. I like the anecdotal opening which draws the reader right in.

“The anthropomorphism of the rose ‘walking without feet’ is a bit confusing – we expect ‘nature’s law’ to be one about where roses usually grow, not about whether they walk or not – we know they don’t.

“The thought seems a bit contorted and led by the rhyme, when a better rhyme word might have been found, one which would loosen up other possibilities for exploring the rose emblem.”

Bella Thorne

(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

Former Disney star Bella Thorne released a collection of her poetry last year in the book The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray, which explored her life as a survivor of sexual assault.

Introspective and dark, she shared a prose poem from her collection in August last year on Instagram (below).

[Content warning: mentions of sexual assault]

The poem

View this post on Instagram

What is wrong with me? Why do I always need Validation from everyone but mostly men... Everyone keeps telling me to be single, be alone, and make your self happy. But All those things sound so fucking scary to me. all I want is him. I want him to hold me, I want him to love me, I want him to tell me it's ok, I want him to look me in the eyes and let me know I'm accepted. Why? Because I can't accept myself. For some reason in my head I'm just not fucking good enough. Not good enough for him or Her or anyone else. And if it's not him I just look for the "next" him, or her Why can't I just look for the next me? Find me and accept me. Was it because I was molested my whole life. Exposed to sex at such a young age it's all I know how to offer to the world...or is it because I was raised to think I wasn't good enough. Not good enough for her or anything else. But it doesn't matter what happened to me.. What matters is whats happening to me right now. I can't blame my childhood, in fact I can't blame anyone for anything. All I can do is blame me. I blame me for not loving myself. I blame me for not thinking I'm attractive, I blame me for putting this on everyone around me. Expecting people to love me enough for me to love myself. But at the end of the day that will never happen. Because the only way to get to your end goal is to work through it. Not around or above or try and find a cheat code so you don't have to hurt as much. You have to hurt in this world. Hurting, loving, and accepting. That's what our emotional world lays on. Right now I only have one of those things. Can you guess what it is? Hurting. Right now I only hurt...but I'm not hurting for other people no I'm only hurting myself. By not loving me and by not accepting me. Usually these free handed writing bits..they have an end, but I don't have an end. I'm still figuring it out as always. So is that ok? Is it ok to know what your end goal Is but absolutely no way or idea how to achieve it. It's probably not but I can only start by accepting it. This poem is about mommy and daddy and me and you ❤️ #thelifeofawannabemogul

A post shared by BELLA (@bellathorne) on Aug 20, 2019 at 12:04pm PDT

Tiffany’s thoughts:

“In its current form this isn’t a poem but a piece of therapeutic self-reflection. It is candid and insightful about the writer’s need for validation, but expressed in familiar self-help terms that are a bit general for the reader to relate to.

“It reads like a piece of free-writing that could form the basis for a poem, but a poem is a linguistic art-form that needs to do inventive things with language, sound patterning, rhythm, image and so forth to make the feelings and thoughts come alive as a specific person’s experience.

“Again, that involves an element of risk – being precise and particular about one’s difficult experiences."

Marilyn Monroe

(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

Old Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe has inspired no end of poetry (notably by poets including Sharon Olds), but the star herself was fond of writing it as well.

Although her poems weren’t published in her lifetime, scraps of poetry she had penned in notebooks was eventually published in 2010 in a book called Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters.

The Poem: untitled

my love sleeps besides me—

in the faint light—I see his manly jaw

give way—and the mouth of his

boyhood returns

with a softness softer

its sensitiveness trembling

in stillness

his eyes must have look out

wondrously from the cave of the little

boy—when the things he did not

understand—

he forgot

but will he look like this when he is dead

oh unbearable fact inevitable

yet sooner would I rather his love die

than/or him

Tiffany’s thoughts:

“This is also a long poetic tradition – observing the beloved asleep (Keats was very good at this) and has a tender quality: I do like the little boy asleep in his cave. ‘Manly jaw’ is a bit of a romance fiction cliché – it would have been good to find a more unexpected way of describing this.

“And the archaic syntax ‘yet sooner would I rather his love die’ is hard to decipher and sounds a bit self-consciously ‘poemy’.

"Perhaps ordinary syntax, as you would say it in real life, would have sounded more sincere: occasionally plain speech in a poem can be very powerful.”

Charlie Sheen

(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

Back in the 1990s, when he was 25, Charlie Sheen published a book of poetry called ‘A Peace of My Mind.'

Ironically, the poetry is tortured and full of angst - including references to “self-inflicted carnage” as well as to drug abuse.

In spite of the brutality and complete existentialism of his poetry, his free verse work only had a limited run - so it's hard to get your hands on a copy of it now.

GQ’s Amy Wallace was able to secure one of the rare copies, which was illustrated by The Chase director Adam Rifkin.

According to Literary Hub, at one point John Stamos is believed to have reviewed the book of poetry.

Stamos ‘or someone purporting to be John Stamos’ on Amazon wrote, “This collection is the best of the best as far as Chas’ art is concerned.”

The poem: I.D. Blues

"Excuse me, aren’t you...?"

"Hey, you look just like..."

"Oh my God, that’s..."

"Sorry to interrupt your dinner, but aren’t you..."

"Look, I never do this, but, my wife thinks you’re..."

"My friend is so convinced that you’re..."

"I’m so embarrassed, but, aren’t you...?"

"I know you must be tired of this, but..."

"WAIT!!"

All eyes held in stare, all mouths locked open in shock, as he pulled the latex Charlie Sheen mask from his head, revealing the rotted skull of President Lincoln.

Tiffany’s thoughts:

“This potentially works really well as a ‘found poem’ – composed of collected remarks that set up the situation without any explanation needed. The last couplet, in expository prose, works like the punch-line to a joke – it’s funny but I can’t help thinking that it would be better to keep to the format of the first part, and ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’.

“Couldn’t the revelation be shown more imaginatively in what the people say, in a ‘Wait, you’re not Charlie Sheen! You’re…’ kind of way? Let the other voices do the work. It would be a more gradual and unsettling revelation. The rotted skull of Lincoln is random and Gothic, but satisfyingly weird.”