Now upping into sinister ante, Millicent. What a low thing to have done, really.
Bill
On 11/09/2015, at 6:26 AM, Millicent Borges Accardi wrote:
> Another layer of complexity!
>
>
> Family Protests White Poet’s Use of Chinese Pen Name
>
> "Controversy erupted in the poetry world earlier this week when it was discovered that a poem included in the annual “Best American Poetry” anthology was written by a white poet, Michael Derrick Hudson, who had submitted it to a journal under the Chinese pseudonym Yi-Fen Chou.
>
>
> Now it turns out that pseudonym may have come from a real person.
> The family of a woman named Yi-Fen Chou, who attended the same high school in Fort Wayne, Ind., as Mr. Hudson, has stepped forward, demanding that he immediately stop using it.
> “I’m just aghast,” Ellen Y. Chou, the sister of Yi-Fen Chou, said in an interview. Mr. Hudson’s use of the name, she added, showed a “lack of honesty” and “careless disregard for Chinese people and for Asians.”
>
> http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/artsbeat/2015/09/10/family-protests-white-poets-use-of-chinese-pen-name/?_r=0&referrer
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> Millicent
>
>
> Kale Soup for the Soul
>
>
> http://www.MillicentBorgesAccardi.com
>
> @TopangaHippie on Twitter
>
> Água mole em pedra dura tanto dá até que fura
>
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>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>
> To: POETRYETC <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thu, Sep 10, 2015 2:55 am
> Subject: Re: What's in a poet's name?
>
>
> very interesting I thought that the poems were supposed to be judged
> blind?
> next we will have women publishing using male nom
> deplumes!!!!!!
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Wootton
> Sent:
> Thursday, September 10, 2015 8:45 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re:
> What's in a poet's name?
>
> Well, Millicent, Hal,
>
> I'd have to say I think
> this isssue is worth discussing. I have read and
> respect much of Sherman's
> prose and poetry and I can understand his take
> here but agree that it it is
> not a good look. Max, you may well add
> something about the Ern Malley affair
> in Australia, the name being a
> fictitious construct by two established writers
> who sought to expose
> publication / quality issues as I understand it. The
> difference being that
> some of the 'Malley' poems may well stand up. This
> Hudson's efforts don't
> look to me to be particularly striking and he does seem
> willing to exploit
> editorial policy or judgment issues and damn the rest of
> the world. Another
> instance here in Australia was the gong being delivered to
> a novel, The Hand
> that Signed the Paper, allegedly written by a Ukranian
> survivor, Helen
> Demidenko which spoke of massacres which apparently never
> occurred. The
> award was later stripped from the writer when she was outed as
> an English
> writer Helen Darville.
>
> Bill
>
> On 10/09/2015, at 9:23 AM,
> Millicent Borges Accardi wrote:
>
>> Greetings,
>>
>>
>> I have many thoughts on
> this matter. Let's see, first of all, Sherman
>> Alexi's essay was kind,
> thoughtful and he laid open his entire process for
>> how he selected poems,
> and was completely transparent. However, in the
>> same situation I would not
> have included the poem.
>>
>>
>> Michael Derrick Hudson donned a "yellow face,"
> by submitting work under a
>> false name (Yi-Fen Chou), and it was NOT a
> persona poem or an attempt to
>> adopt heteronyms like Fernando Pessoa (where
> the poet creates identities
>> and writing styles). It was a clear case of
> fraud, an author attempting to
>> get his work published. It was not part of a
> larger installation or
>> visionary project about identity and race. It was
> non-deliberate and
>> thoughtless. I found Hudson's bio in BAP and
> "explanation" to be
>> especially disconcerting and offensive.
>>
>>
>> And
> even though editors say they read work "color blind," author name DOES
>> make
> a difference as to how a poem is interpreted.
>>
>>
>> Like David Mura said, "On
> the White Guy submitting poetry as "Yi-Fen Chou"
>> and being chosen for the
> Best American Poetry: Of course this use of
>> yellow face is ridiculous and
> offensive as is the poet's reasons for doing
>> so. . . .There's so many things
> wrong with this implication but to get
>> into it, I'd have to write an entire
> dissection of the ways race plays out
>> in the literary world. So I'll just
> stick to something more literary:
>> . . .Sherman could have made the case that
> the poem reads differently if
>> you know it's been written by a white male,
> rather than an Asian or an
>> Asian American. But that would require an
> discussion of how certain poems
>> are actually read in part with a knowledge
> and a context provided by who
>> the author is. It's not, as some maintain,
> that the words should be judged
>> only as they appear on the page and nothing
> else matters. As with standup
>> comics, the person delivering the words is
> part of the way we hear and
>> interpret the words. When Patricia Smith writes
> a poem in the voice of a
>> racist skinhead, we read that poem knowing the poet
> who wrote it is a
>> black woman and that is part of the accomplishment of the
> poem--how she is
>> able to enter the mind and feelings of someone who hates
> who she is. . .
>> .With the poem in question in the BAP anthology, there's a
> tone of
>> complaint which to my mind reads differently if you know the author
> is a
>> white male rather than an Asian or Asian American. If I read it as
> being
>> written by an Asian or Asian American, that tone of complaint takes on
> a
>> level of irony which is not there if I know the poem was written by a
>>
> white male: "My life's spent/ running an inept tour for my own."
>>
>>
>>
> Garrett Hongo's words, "most of the response from non-Asians has been to
>>
> "appreciate" Sherman's candid and forthright statement in his long
>> apologia
> on the matter. Or, in the extreme, to express support of "Yi-Fen
>> Chou."
> Meanwhile, most Asians are angry in the extreme, even to the point
>> of
> condemning Pound for "The River-Merchant's Wife" as an historical act
>> of
> "yellowface." Others are above the fray and see it as po-biz silliness.
>> Lots
> of non-hearing going on about this. At bottom, to me, is the issue of
>>
> Orientalism and the historical Western proprietorship of racial masquerade
>>
> regarding colonized and oppressed peoples. "Freedom" here is the freedom
>> to
> colonize EVERYTHING, including identity, and to treat it as commodity,
>> which
> can be both circulated and jettisoned as deemed necessary by the
>> functioning
> of POWER.
>>
>>
>> Millicent
>>
>>
>>
>> Kale Soup for the Soul
>>
>>
>>
> http://www.MillicentBorgesAccardi.com
>>
>> @TopangaHippie on Twitter
>>
>>
> Água mole em pedra dura tanto dá até que fura
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]>
>>
> To: POETRYETC <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Wed, Sep 9, 2015 3:51 pm
>>
> Subject: What's in a poet's name?
>>
>>
>> What's in a poet's name?
>>
>> Your
> views poetryetcers?
>>
>>
>>
> http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2015/09/07/yi_fen_chou_is_michael_derrick_hudson_the_best_american_poetry_from_2015.html
>>
>>
> Bill
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
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