Poetry Editor Fired For Tweet

Today in Corporate Twitter: Magazine Can’t Handle The Truth

First of all: there are still Poetry Editors? This week that number was slashed by one.

The funny thing about Twitter is we know it’s dangerous.

Like blogging before it, people do get fired and canceled and reputations are sometimes ruined forever because of the things they tweet.

And yet we soldier on because… fuck it. Bad shit has happened to people who opened their mouths before social media and it’ll happen after the last packet has been delivered.

Abortions aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Crack smells awful;
Might as well live

or something.

Two days ago a poetry editor sighed in the darkness and sent out a tweet about how her world isn’t what it used to be.

Most of us can relate to not only her universe but ours as well.

A jazz musician could have written the same thing. Or a taxi driver. Or a stereo salesman.

Some are arguing that Danielle Rose just had a bad day and was venting, and was misunderstood.

But how wrong was she?

Outside of the beautiful young Black woman who delivered that poem for President Biden’s inaugural, how many poets under 40 years old can the average person name?

My guess is zero since I can’t even name the one I am referencing… and she’s from LA. We’ve probably honked at each other on the 10.

Like jazz, poetry is everywhere and nowhere. It does not have the strongest lobby, and outside of Julia Wick I don’t see poems on Twitter, which is why I had no idea there was a Poetry Twitter community there until this week when this woman was canned for stating her opinion.

One goal of mine commenting on social media under the passive-aggressive Today in Corporate Twitter umbrella, is to spotlight that corporate culture — and especially corporate executives — first need to admit they have no idea wtf Twitter is and how businesses could comfortably fit in to it.

Second, they need to be more forgiving to people who OMG say what’s real for them at that moment in public.

Third, they shouldn’t forget that people change their minds, which is something that happens when open-minded people engage in honest dialogues… which often occur when someone says something we are all thinking, but aren’t brave enough to write it down.

Or say out loud.

Or tweet it out.

Which is what this now-unemployed editor did.

Which is what good editors should do more often.

Regardless of this unfortunate turn of events.