on laziness: almost nothing was ever said about someone being lazy that ought to have been said--if you believe that good should come from hard work you begin to wrongly attribute badness to things that come with ease and assume difficulty from things you already find good https://twitter.com/surrealsermons/status/1293220664887906308

furthermore, laziness is racialized. note that a stereotype of black folks has long been that they are lazy. note too that white supremacy can hold conflicting sins in its mouth, because the hard work of black folks, and their inherent ability to do it, is what drove slavery

on disrespect: to whom? poetry is a form of expression. you don't do disrespect to music by singing karaoke. you don't disrespect dance by doing it in your kitchen. to publishing? should we respect any industry AS an industry? or do you mean to the "tradition?"

i hope you mean the tradition. because there's an irony in that. since this poem is clearly (if you've read some books by black writers) in conversation with Terrance Hayes' "sonnet." so the "work" you are expecting of this poem is happening conceptually

hayes' sonnet is a poem about who has the right to the tradition. it is a poem about performance, and what is expected of black artists and black artistry. it plays with technicality. is a black poem that is technically a sonnet more artful than a poem that is not?

is making something that was difficult to make inherently more beautiful than making something that was not difficult to make? is what makes poetry poetry that it fits into a tradition? who gets to make that tradition? who gets to remake it?

but the big question: once a tradition is remade, who is it most important will understand it?

also this is gonna sound sarcastic but it is not: i have not read a lot of the OP's work but what i've seen/read is very good

not a fan of this framing of this poem, and i've said my piece on that, but like pushing against tradition is part of their poetry and i really dig it

a self-call-out: i think probably i have called poets i dislike lazy. part of my gut reaction to this thread is a kind of internalized disgust with my own laziness, and i hate that i feel that way about myself and about others. it's baseless. it comes from what i've been called

and it contributes to an obsessiveness with working that is often not healthy. like none of that is on the OP, but it IS why i am trying to rethink what we are really trying to say when we call someone lazy