I'll admit that I don't pay much (enough?) attention to the trendy world of poetry publishing these days. In fact, I haven't done it at all since university, more than four decades ago. Back then, I sort of got turned off by the way the academics wrote and discussed their poetry. The trend was for Manly Men to write Manly Men poetry, which they read aloud while wearing flannel shirts, usually from expensive shops, to indicate the authenticity of their 'voices'. A typical poem went something like this:

Dear God of the wildness of poetry, let them mate

To the death in the rotten branches,

Let the tree sway and burst into flame. . .

James Dickey, 'For the Last Wolverine'

Nature, red in tooth and claw, that sort of thing. Tough, tough poetry, with blood, guts, and drinking in. Anyhow, I went off it, so I don't keep up with the poetry lot. Which explains why I was kind of surprised when I ran across this item on the Museum of Hoaxes website:

Yi-Fen's big break came when one of his poems, "The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve" (originally published in Prairie Schooner) was selected for inclusion in the 2015 edition of Best American Poetry edited by Sherman Alexie.

That's when the trouble started. . . his real name wasn't Yi-Fen Chou, nor was he Chinese-American. He was actually Michael Derrick Hudson. . .

First of all, it's nice to know that these literary journals are still using those quaint names. Second, I've read the poem a couple of times, and frankly, I like it. Hudson's no Byron, but I like his wry tone here. I read it to Elektra, who laughed and said the 'fractured English' part reminded her of Fergusons (local tour guides) we have known and loved. I hasten to point out that we, too, have been Fergusons, both of us, so we have Authentic Experience and are entitled to talk about this subject. That remark will become clearer as I natter on. But let's talk about Hudson, and what he did with his poem.

Apparently, when editor Sherman Alexie picked the 'Bees, etc' poem for his Best American Poetry edition, he wasn't aware that 'Yi-Fen Chou' was a pseudonym. Now, this wouldn't have mattered one iota to me, or probably to you. (I know my readers.) But it mattered rather a lot to Mr Alexie, who admittedly wanted to increase the diversity of this anthology by including more different voices from a variety of Americans. Since the anthology is called Best American Poetry, there's nothing wrong with that. So Mr Hudson let him know that, well, he'd been using a pseudonym. Hudson published poetry under his own name, but this particular poem had been rejected 40 times. He decided to try an experiment. He sent the poem back out under the Chinese pseudonym he sometimes uses, and it got picked up after only 9 tries. The fact that the poem then got re-anthologised was just lagniappe. At least, that was Hudson's story, and he seems to have stuck to it. I can't find any recent interviews, though – he seems to have been silent. Nobody else has been silent, however. There have been howls of protest.

Sherman Alexie said he was hopping mad about the deception, but decided to leave the poem in because 'it would have been dishonest to do otherwise.' I agree with that part. You might enjoy Alexie's version of events. It's pretty funny: he's a funny writer, although I often disagree with him. (I'm sure he cares.) Other people have got mad at Sherman Alexie, and even madder at Michael Derrick Hudson. They accused Hudson of being 'racist' and using 'yellowface' and opposing Affirmative Action and all sorts of sins that I don't think are particularly warranted. But as I said, I can't find an interview with the poet himself, so I can't speak to his motivations. And I don't really care why these people pick the poems they pick. The publications belong to them: they're paying the bills. They can decide what's cool and what's not over at Prairie Schooner and Best of. . ., etc.

What I am concerned with is the message this kind of wrangle sends the rest of us. The ones who don't care a fig whether a US academic thinks we write great poetry or prose or what-have-you. The ones of us who are trying to achieve what Robbie Stamp recently reminded me we're after: an authenticity not widely available on the internet.

So I ask myself:

• Is 'authenticity' something these people – academics, experts – are in a position to judge?
• Do I have to belong to a particular club to have an 'authentic' voice?
• Is my biography necessary to the appreciation of what I write?
• Do I have to present my bona fides on every possible occasion? I decline to do this. Sherman Alexie can sit on it.
• Does the search for 'authenticity' mean that there are subjects we aren't allowed to write about, or speculate on, because we don't have the right background? Do we have to 'stay in our own lanes', and write only about what we ourselves have personally experienced? And then, maybe, check it against the accepted norms for those experiences? Is there another word for this: self-censorship?

Do I sympathise, deeply and sincerely, with people who find that they have been shut out of the dialogue for far too long by a prejudiced majority? Heck, yeah. Most of us have been in that camp once or twice, we know it hurts, we don't want anybody else to suffer. Do I think that modern writers are too preoccupied with 'cultural appropriation', to the detriment of paying attention to each other? I do, sometimes.

I agree that white actors shouldn't play minorities in plays and films without a darn good excuse. And who wants to read about someone's experience as filtered through the lens of an uncomprehending foreigner? Unless, of course, that was the point of the story, that it was an uncomprehending foreigner. . .

But I, personally, insist on viewing myself as a unique minority. That minority, at least on the internet, is called Dmitri Gheorgheni. No, that name doesn't reflect the ethnic origin of my own RL birth name¹. That name is none of the reader's business. I'm not pretending anything: this voice is who I am. I'll tell as I want to tell. You read as you want to read. My unique minority perspective reflects the way I, as writer, poet, editor, whatever, choose to see the world. Take it or leave it. And don't you dare say, 'But if I don't know your demographic, I can't tell how authentic your voice is.' What the reader who says this really means is, 'If I don't know what groups you belong to, I can't tell whether or not to approve of you.' To which I say, 'Good.'

This is true of each and every one of us at h2g2. Individually, we may be more or less revelatory when it comes to our personal biographies. But we are ultimately anonymous for a reason. We are anonymous for exactly the same reason that we often tell our best stories to strangers on a train. We want to share, but we don't want to build a lifetime narrative on the basis of that sharing. We keep our names, addresses and vital statistics to ourselves.

Sharing like this is a pure gift. When we share on h2g2, we add to the world's store of knowledge. We don't ask for money. We don't even want fame. We hold out a story, a joke, a piece of digital art, and we say, 'Here. For what it's worth. Here's what the world looks like from where I'm standing. Maybe it will help you in some way.' The most we get back is a comment or another story, artwork, whatever, in return.

I'm not saying that the academics are wrong here. Heck, my own background is in academia [full disclosure], and I know how professors think, I've been one. I can see that they want to educate the kids to be respectful and inclusive. Respectful and inclusive is a good thing. But we're that already. We're as inclusive as we know how to be without going out and kidnapping new Researchers. What we need to remember is that we – all of us, wherever we happen to be, old, young, Yank, Brit, European, African, human, alien – are entitled to our voices. We've got something to say. We have opinions, and those opinions are okay, too.

We don't have to stay in our own lanes.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

10.04.17 Front Page

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