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
>
>
>