Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark McDonnell
I wonder (Andrew) why you felt it necessary to add the editorial 'not great' to your link, as if this softens or justifies the ridiculous treatment the poem/poet received.
|
Hi Mark,
I found the debate interesting because I saw a lot of it on Twitter. Some of it really was brought up points that I hadn't thought of. I found it challenging because I still couldn't bring myself to think that Carlson-Wee did something that he needed an apology, and yet he still did. As did Stephanie Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith.
I specifically mentioned the quality of the poem because that should be the foreground of a reading: the poem was raised up and published in the journal, despite it's mediocrity, in part because of identity politics; for that very same reason it was torn down.
As for the treatment, I think there are interesting questions, and specifically Americentric questions, about blackface and minstrel-shows. All the language of appropriation is, to my mind, unconvincing; I'm more interested in the former, and what those lines might be.
Here's John McWhorter on it.
(The "ableist" language Burt and Smith apologized for, given the context, is frankly absurd.)