Sufjan Stevens' piss poems found by Penn State student

To quote Survivor 50 player Christian Hubicki shortly after he accidentally pooped his pants: “There are many elements of being human. Laughing, crying, cuddling a loved one… But also the sheer and utter embarrassment of unexpected gastrointestinal distress.” In a similar vein, one of the most beautiful and enduring aspects of the human experience is our perennial need to piss. As it turns out, Sufjan Stevens, who has long been a master of capturing every nook and cranny of a life, knows this all too well.

According to TikTok user and Penn State undergrad @greenwitchwh0re, “my professor casually dropped that he went to school with sufjan stevens today, and showed us his chapbook of poems. he told us, ‘every time he had to pee, he would joy [sic] down a quick poem’ and would take pictures of places he peed. my professor has no idea how big of a flex this is.” This is, essentially, Poop Map (this app every guy I knew in my freshman year of college used to log where and when they pooped so all their friends could see) for the soul—and bladder. 

The student posted a carousel of photos of Stevens’ aptly-titled Piss Poems chapbook, including pictures of poems such as “When the doctor’s diagnosis said bi-polar” and “Glaucoma Summer,” as well as shots of urinals printed onto the pages that, presumably, were the ones Stevens pissed in. The introductory page to the chapbook was included as well, featuring a photo of a brooding-looking college-aged Stevens with overlaid text reading, dialogue-style, “Hold on a second—I gotta take a piss.” Below the black-and-white pic, the beloved singer-songwriter typed the following paragraph:

“These are the poems I write when I have to take a piss really bad. I sip caffeinated soda when I write, or heavy coffee with two spoonfuls of evaporated milk. If I’m sitting at the computer for more than forty minutes, typing something vain and esoteric, I inevitably have to go to the bathroom, if not for natural purposes, then for mere procrastination, a personal habit. I make a commitment to say something brief and poignant and certainly poetic before relieving my bladder. I make myself type it up with broken lines, bad meter, sentences without syntax, without purpose, with misspellings, and then enjambment. I type it up before the muse makes me worry over where the commas turn, where the titles make no sense or what the verbs eventually modify. I make a quick save, take a piss and never change a word. This chapbook contains a sample of the more coherent piss poems.”