ABSTRACT
Both punk and poetry are notoriously difficult to define. Most of the definitions available fail to factor in the complexity of the sociocultural realities behind these terms. When attempting to define intricate concepts such as punk and poetry, etymology is a good place to start. Punk presented sex as a grinding mechanical act, as a perverse, loveless game of domination and submission—a metaphor for modern life—and as a means of social warfare. The commercialization of punk peaked in the mid-1990s when 'neo-punk' bands such as Green Day and the Offspring, filling the void left by the punk-inflected rock band Nirvana, conquered the airwaves. Poetry is a physical, in some sense primal, experience from which we humans derive enormous pleasure. The anthropologist Donald E. Brown has shown that it is one of many so-called human universals—that is, one of the features common to all cultures and societies.
