[Mark McDonnell]

Hey Andrew,

When I made the comment about 'woke' I wasn't suggesting that white people were the first to jump on the poem. I was just pointing out the irony that 'woke' seems to be the African American vernacular expression that it's ok for white liberals to use. I know lots of black people complained too. A Google search of 'Eve Ewing Carlson Wee' proves fruitless though.

Your sudden dismissal of McWhorter (who you enthusiastically linked to remember?) as being unaware of how black English is treated in the real world 'outside the academy' seems a weak argument. Do you really think the publication, in a left-wing magazine like The Nation, of a poem whose only crime may be clumsiness is going to fuel more racism of the sort you describe from your upbringing?

The long apology? Well, that strikes me as foolish.

I agree. Though I'd go much further than foolish. 'Craven' is about right. And worrying in the precedent it sets. Schulman points out in her piece that in her 35 years as editor (1971 - 2006) the magazine never felt the need to apologise for a poem it published. Now it has, for a poem that you acknowledge is clearly not racist.

Yet Carlson-Wee isn't racist; he just wrote a mediocre poem in a dialect he may or may not understand. Walter is right again that if he pulled it off most wouldn't have cared.

I don't agree with this. From what I've read of the Twitter comments, most people's objections weren't that he didn't 'pull it off', they were that he dared attempt it at all. No doubt if Berryman were writing now he would get the same response. Very few of the comments were along the lines of 'black people don't talk like this'

(“I’m trying to understand the voice in this poem, it feels offensive to me and like it’s trafficking inappropriately in Black language, but is there something I’m missing?”
“Don’t use AAVE. Don’t even try it. Know your lane.”
"AAVE isn’t a costume. do better" (this to the magazine, not the poet))

Now, all of these comments were from black poets, so who am I to say they're wrong? And yet it feels wrong to me. Are they automatically right because they're black? I'm sure you wouldn't say this. Imagining oneself into another persona is a fundamental creative freedom. It can be done well or badly. If it is done with malice or mockery then it should be rightly called out. And remain unpublished. I still don't agree with Walter's suggestion that publishing the poetic 'responses' from Twitter would have been the best course of action. A poem should be published in a magazine for one reason only: because the editors think that it is of sufficient artistic merit. Not to assuage some sense of guilt or under pressure to provide some sort of balance. Again, that's what the 'Letters to the Editor' page is for. The Nation clearly decided that this poem was of sufficient artistic merit. And then, suddenly, they apologised for that decision.

Without Twitter, the smartest critiques that led the way would have had some primacy; instead, we got a mob.

Indeed. I agree that there is a nuanced conversation to be had about this. The problem isn't the Twitter mob though, it's that The Nation capitulated to that mob. It didn't have to. It could have ignored it or, as I say, simply granted some of the more nuanced voices a right of reply on its letters page.

This, from the editors' lengthy apology, strikes me as particularly chilling coming from people supposedly versed in how poetry works.

As poetry editors, we hold ourselves responsible for the ways in which the work we select is received.

No no no.

Now, I know you agree that the magazine shouldn't have apologised, but we seem to disagree on whether or not that is the main issue. For me it is. Obviously it isn't as important an issue as poets being jailed for what they write, but bringing that up just seems a facile way to conduct an argument, like a parent saying 'stop moaning, there are kids starving in Africa'.