Before we begin discussing the most amusing story of the year (so far!), which is headlined thusly at the Washington Post
and thusly at Slate
let us first discuss my own bias against poetry. It's a rather simple bias, though one you should probably be aware of before we get going so you can bail out before we get much further. My bias is this: poetry is garbage, modern poetry in particular. It's one of the lowest forms of human artistic communication, a notch above armpit farting but a notch below those banners that people attach to prop airplanes to advertise wings at Hooters over Daytona Beach. If you're not a 12-year-old girl with a crush on a cute guy (or girl, whatever) in your algebra class scribbling "Roses are Red" doodles on the back of your notebook, you shouldn't be writing poetry.
Consider, for instance, the opening lines of an excerpt from the poem that has caused so much consternation:
Huh! That bumblebee looks ridiculous staggering its way
across those blue flowers, the ones I can never
remember the name of. Do you know the old engineer’sjoke: that, theoretically, bees can’t fly? But they look so
perfect together, like Absolute Purpose incarnate: one bee
plus one blue flower equals about a billion
It goes on like that for a while. Just look at it: banalities separated by line breaks in random places in order to create the illusion of depth. HOORAY ART. Seriously: The "20 WINGS 4 $5" banner fluttering above bikini-clad booties is a more beautiful use of the language.
Anyway. The relative uselessness of poetry/my philistinic lack of appreciation for this "art form" is not really the issue here. The issue here is the amusing way this whole contretemps has exposed the contradiction at the heart of affirmative action. The basic facts of the story are simple. A white poet submitted the aforementioned poem to 40 outlets under his own name and was rejected by all of them. Following these 40 days and 40 nights of dissatisfaction, the author adopted a Chinese-sounding pseudonym and began resubmitting his work, hitting paydirt after the ninth submission. The poem published under the Chinese-sounding pseudonym was then forwarded along to the editor of the Best American Poetry anthology, who chose it for inclusion—after which time the deception was quickly uncovered, roiling the world of people who think that poetry matters.
Here is how the author at Slate explained the outrage of "a white guy named Michael" writing under an Asian pseudonym:
Hudson’s attempt to game the poetry submissions system is, of course, unethical. He lied to reap the benefits of affirmative action, a set of practices designed to ease the effects of ingrained injustice. BAP stunts aside, it’s still much more difficult for female writers and writers of color to get published than for white men. And, as with the case of Rachel Dolezal, assuming a minority identity when it suits you and then retreating into inherited advantages when it doesn’t pretty much defines white privilege.
Except, of course, that this story kind of shows that it's not much more difficult. Perhaps there are fewer women and minorities submitting work overall or at disproportionately lower rates, perhaps their work simply isn't as good, who knows. But what this story shows—and what drives defenders of affirmative action so crazy—is that the barriers to entry actually aren't that high. That, indeed, a minority has a relatively big advantage over a white person in such endeavors. Another angry person explained her rage thusly:
"When you’re doing this from a position of entitlement, you’re appropriating an ethnic identity that’s one, imaginary, and two, doesn’t have access to the literary world," poet and Chapman University professor Victoria Chang told The Washington Post. "And it diminishes categorically all of our accomplishments. He sort of implies that minorities are published because we’re minorities, not because of our work. That’s just insulting because it strips everything we’ve worked so hard for."
He doesn't "sort of imply." He shows this to be the case. The guy who chose the entries for the poetry anthology literally admitted this is the case. Here's one of his rules for choosing poems:
Rule #5: I will pay close attention to the poets and poems that have been underrepresented in the past. So that means I will carefully look for great poems by women and people of color. And for great poems by younger, less established poets. And for great poems by older poets who haven't been previously lauded. And for great poems that use rhyme, meter, and traditional forms.
And here is how that rule impacted his decision-making process:
Do you see what happened?
I did exactly what that pseudonym-user feared other editors had done to him in the past: I paid more initial attention to his poem because of my perception and misperception of the poet's identity. Bluntly stated, I was more amenable to the poem because I thought the author was Chinese American.
Would Michael's poem have been published in the anthology if not for his Asian-sounding name? Of course not. Never would've happened, in part because it never would've been published in the first place.
Now, look: Maybe it's a good thing that minority and female poets are being chosen on the basis of their private parts* and their skin color. If you want to make that argument, please feel free to. Hooray inclusivity! But don't ask us to then pretend that the art wasn't chosen for reasons largely external to the art. The cognitive dissonance is simply too much to bear.
*Sorry: The private parts they identify as having, or whatever the proper terminology is these days. Hard to keep up.