The False Poets

Some thoughts on the Yi-Fen Chou Episode Tending in the Direction of a Conclusion

1. There have been some attempts to portray Michael Derrick Hudson as a failed frustrated white poet who essentially put on yellow-face to steal a taste of undeserved success. But even the most rudimentary google search will demonstrate that he has in fact been quite successful, publishing pieces in Poetry magazine as well as a number of university presses.

2. It is striking how little there was for Hudson to gain by his act of pseudonymous submission. In the world of literature there are two rewards for being published: personal glory and, occasionally, money. By publishing as Yi-Fen Chou, Hudson guaranteed himself neither. His celebration for publishing the piece could only be a very private one and if there were a check sent, Hudson would not have been able to cash it.

3. In other words, Hudson’s act of submitting some poems under an assumed name was very much in line with the persona he has embodied in his poetry: self-deprecation bordering on self-hatred.

4. It’s also been written that Hudson used the false identity to steal a spot for himself in the Best American Poetry anthology. But poets do not submit to the anthology. The editors for BAP choose from poems already published during the year. You could argue that he defrauded (or at least fooled) the editors at Prairie Schooner, which originally ran the piece. The fact that Hudson’s poem was selected for the anthology was an ironic accident. (An accident because unintended, ironic because it lead to his exposure.)

5. For what it’s worth, both Hudson’s background and his style remind me a little bit of Philip Larkin. Larkin was a provincial librarian from England who wrote magnificently bitter and rueful poetry, spiked by surges of wit. Hudson is a provincial librarian in the US whose poetry is nowhere near as witty and not remotely magnificent, but there is a similarity in tone and subject matter.

6. Hudson also shares a sensibility with Sherman Alexie, the editor of this year’s BAP: the gloomy but sardonic teenage misfit, the rueful but humorous truth-teller. You can see how Alexis would be drawn to the poem no matter who the writer was.

7. Getting to the heart of the matter: lots of people are outraged that a white male poet would assume a Chinese female identity, presumably to make his work more publishable. Although Hudson has not directly stated why he chose this false identity, it is widely assumed that he believed that poets from exotic or disadvantaged backgrounds would have a leg up in getting their work accepted.

8. Alexis has admitted that he was initially drawn to the poem because of the name of the author.

9. Many writers have spoken out to defend the idea of seeking out poets from disadvantaged or underrepresented backgrounds. In a brief essay for The Rumpus titled “Yellowface-in-Poetry, ” Brian Spears went so far as to say that magazines should not have blind submissions because editors should be able to choose poems based on the background of the poets.

10. The essential thinking behind such claims is that there are literally no standards by which to judge a poem. The act of choosing to publish one poem over another is based on a process that is purely subjective. All poems are all essentially the same—groupings of words to be given meaning (or not) by the reader. Therefore, why not give authors from various backgrounds their due? It’s like dividing up overtime work at a factory.

11. What’s missing from the discussion is any sense of aesthetic principles, some set of ideals about what constitutes a good (or even a great) poem. Poetry right now is in a state of chaos with no academy to aspire to or rebel against. Everyone has their own voice and no one to listen.

12. An analogy can be made to the history of jazz. In 1948, for instance, the jazz world was at war. On one side there were the defenders of big-band swing, on the other the small-group beboppers. You could be a connoisseur of one style or the other (or both), but within each genre you had some idea of what the musicians were trying to accomplish and whether they succeeded.  Much like contemporary jazz, the poetry scene is increasingly filled with singular atomized artists trying to find their own obscure note.

13. Sherman Alexie tried to find a bit of hope to this situation, tweeting about how cool it was that people are crazy-passionate about poems. I wish I could second his appraisal. But it was not poetry that fueled the crazy passions, it was identity politics.

14. It is a strange fate for contemporary poetry to have taken up the mantel of cultural identity. Poetry is probably the last place to learn about a culture. Whether they like it or not, most poets live just little bit apart from their fellow citizens. Would you read Li Po to understand life during the Tang dynasty or read Basho to gain insights into the daily life of Japan in the 1600s? Are most Americans as wildly enthusiastic as Whitman or as hermetic as Dickinson? For that matter, are most Native Americans as individualistic and insightful as Sherman Alexis?

15. Poetry may not be able to heal the world and poets may not be the world’s unacknowledged legislators. Poetry can certainly not undo the ravages of colonialism, racism, war or slavery. But at its best, it can offer a soothing balm to the reader, serve as a beacon of secret light in a world drawn to darkness, offer a mystifying journey beyond the boundaries of common-sense or provide the words to an unheard melody that sings softly in the reader’s ear.

16. In other words, poetry can offer what both Michael Derrick Hudson and his numerous critics have failed to provide.