Justin Bieber, a musician who has sold an estimated 150 million records, has turned his hand to poetry. With predictable results
Justin Bieber wrote a love poem about his wife, Hailey Baldwin, but was forced to delete it due to spelling errors.
Justin Bieber then corrected the spelling errors and reposted the poem – which is a bit like Christina Rossetti’s ‘In An Artist’s Studio’ if Christina Rossetti’s ‘In an Artist’s Studio’ wasn’t written by Christina Rossetti at all but instead the combination of a stray dog tearing through a newspaper in a rubbish bin, trying to lick off all the chicken grease, and the wind, which happened to blow some of the torn-up fragments together into a semi-interpretable jumble on the pavement – for a second time.
Justin Bieber then deleted his second posting of the poem for reasons that are unclear and re-reposted again, the poem, for a third time, and this is the end result. This is the end result. The end result is this.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BwAXtOeHFms/
I will now imagine a world in which I, a melancholic English teacher who, like all English teachers, once harboured dreams of being a poet until, like 99% of poets, I realised I wasn’t very good, am handed this brazen piece of literature by a young Mr. Bieber in response to a homework assignment of ‘read Chapters 2 and 3 of Wuthering Heights’. I tell him to see me after class for feedback. Here is that feedback.
A Critical Evaluation of Justin Bieber’s ‘Sunlight falls into the Abyss’
Sunlight falls into the Abyss
Just like i fall into your lips
You have capitalised ‘Abyss’ as though it is a literal place rather than a metaphorical bottomless chasm, which, actually, I am kinda into. That’s pretty good. Makes it more an actual state of being – as in you yourself are the Abyss. Who knew the artist behind such hits as ‘Baby’ and ‘Beauty and a Beat’ had such depth? You then immediately ruin this with a horrible cliche and a lowercase ‘i’. Still, as starts go, it could be worse. The image of sunlight fading into the black of an abyss is like a 5.5/10 on the poetry scale. It could be a lot, lot worse. Well done so far.
Waves crash onto the shore
My love for you grows more and more
Fuck me this is bad. Jesus fucking Christ Justin. This is terrible. This is fucking awful mate. You’ve ruined it already. ‘Waves crash onto the shore’ has been overused to the point of complete meaningless and is essentially just a tell-tale sign that somebody is a wanker. ‘My love for you grows more and more’ is the kind of empty vessel sentence written by babies or Hallmark. Or both. The babies they employ at Hallmark, like Mr Burns’ and his thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters. Shocking.
Sound of the crickets a true meditation
I think about you, Gods greatest creation.
I am vomiting, Justin. I am vomiting. ‘Gods’ needs an apostrophe before the s. Justin, I am vomiting.
As I fall into this blissful state
I ponder on how you’re my one true SOULMATE
Ponder on? Ponder on? Who the fuck has been teaching you? Apart from me, your disinterested, alcoholic English teacher, who has been teaching you? Your one true SOULMATE? Ponder ON?
You’ve used fall again, like the falling of the sunlight into the abyss in the first line, that’s lazy. As is ‘blissful state’. The capitalisation of SOULMATE is interesting in a way I can’t quite explain. As in, it’s interesting like Mark Francois is interesting, which is to say that it’s interesting not because it holds any fundamental value or quality of interestingness but simply because it is there, in front of you, waving its arm and being quite visibly loud and stupid.
Its getting dark to dark to see
A chilling breeze embraces me
This is literally just a Bob Dylan lyric. Also *it’s. And *too. But just the first ‘to’. Don’t change both of the ‘to’ to ‘too’ otherwise we’ll be right back to where we started and that will all be too much for me to take. Do you understand? You’re nodding but I don’t think you understand. ‘A chilling breeze’ is a terrible description as well by the way. Sorry. It’s just not a breeze if it’s chilling. That’s like describing a nap as ‘tumultuous’. Actually, is that so incongruous it actually works? It is actually good? Hold that thought. Maybe this is all going over my head and is actually far deeper a work than I initially realised. Like ‘Pumped Up Kicks’.
The smell of camomile fresh from the garden
My life is a movie that both of us star in.
Oh. Nevermind.
Speaking of stars I’m starting to see some
They light up the sky, reminds me of my freedom
You see, what you’ve done here is very cleverly and subtly play on the double meaning of star as both a term for a famous or acclaimed actor appearing in a major role in a film and also to refer to a celestial body in the sky. Very good. Hailey is a lucky, lucky woman.
How big and how vast our world is around us
So grateful for god we were lost but he found us
This is where the big artistic risk pays off and that rhyming scheme of AA/BB/CC/DD/EE/FF you were building up with, so rare to see these days, finally and emphatically lands with the final couplet of ‘us’… and ‘us’. Triumphant.
So I write the poem with him always in mind
‘The poem’. ‘So I write the poem’. ‘So I write the poem with him always in mind’. Fucking hell mate. This is your last line? It’s not exactly ‘Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; Not as she is, but as she fills his dream’ you know? This is even worse than some of Lana Del Rey’s lyrics.
That being said, who am I to question the love between a 25-year-old multi-millionaire pop musician very clearly tiring of his inordinate wealth and fame and a 22-year-old model and tv personality born into an extended family of rich actors? C+.
