Joy, love, sadness, anger: humans share a plethora of emotions that are universal across the globe, no matter the background. One of the most primal and foremost feelings of humanity is the urgency of needing to pee. When the feeling hits – oh man, you chugged that water too fast — few else in life seems to matter.
About the Piss Poet
Sufjan Stevens, a musician, songwriter and poet, realized and took advantage of this desperation when he developed the concept of his poetry chapbook called “Piss Poems.” The artist is long-known for his ability to draw out the meaning and emotion of the most mundane aspects of being alive, so it only makes sense for him to have explored excretion in his work.
During his career, Stevens has released 10 solo albums and countless collaborations with other musical artists. He has been nominated for Grammys and Academy Awards, and is most well known for his contributions to the soundtrack of the 2017 film “Call Me By Your Name.“
Unearthing the Chapbook
An unnamed Penn State Undergrad on TikTok, under the username @greenwitchwh0re, posted a slideshow of photos capturing a handmade chapbook of poems written by Stevens. The user detailed through photo captions that their professor went to school with Stevens and thus received an anthology of the artist’s earlier work. The identity of the professor remains unknown. The TikTok user writes that their instructor, “has no idea how big of a flex this is.”
The TikTok slideshow features a firework by Stevens to the anthology, where he explains the concept for each poem it contains. Stevens writes that he typically drinks caffeinated soda or coffee when he writes, and that he frequently uses the bathroom, if not as a result of excessive hydration, then because he simply wants to procrastinate through the more boring aspects of writing.
What Makes a Piss Poem?
The idea of the piss poems is that Stevens would write as usual, but when the need to urinate arose, he would jot down a complete poem from start to finish, not allowing himself relief until the poem was complete. As a result, these works are more desperate, having not been altered or revised by Stevens after the last word was written. They contain the original line breaks, grammatical errors and, according to Stevens, may not make much sense at all.
When we allow ourselves the restriction of time and physical ability, we also allow ourselves the freedom to be imperfect and truly vulnerable. The idea of creating art with such urgency is appealing, especially to perfectionists who meditate and mull over the placement of one comma for hours at a time. Sometimes, the best art is born from being physically incapable of wasting a single moment.
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