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  #21  
Unread 02-03-2019, 05:51 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Given typical editorial response times, how many years would it take for a poem to rack up over 40 rejections, if the author were actually complying with "no simultaneous submissions" policies?

Sam, we might need to define what "meritocracy" means. I assume it's in scare quotes because some people question the standards by which merit is being measured.

I keep thinking of this paragraph from Dave's essay:

Quote:
But the climax of [comedian Hannah] Gadsby’s remarkable monologue exposes another problem of identity. Identity is not merely the possession of an individual saying, “I identify as….” Identity is also the way others see us. These others might be our family and friends, with whom we sometimes differ, or the institutions where we work and interact with others, but also truly malevolent people, like the man who beat the shit out of Gadsby simply because of the way he identified her. He hated gays. He thought beating the shit out of people he considered different was the way a man should behave. The violence and abuse so many have suffered for so long because of their identity—whether defined by race, gender, sexuality or something else—is what makes any discussion of identity in society, as well as in the arts, particularly fraught.
My Chinese-American husband and I have two daughters. Their self-identifications are important, even though those self-identifications don't seem to do a damn thing to change how others perceive them. When they were each born, my daughters' race was identified in medical documents by two different nurses (two and a half years apart), who noted their parents' races the same way, but called the darker-skinned kid Chinese and the lighter-skinned kid White. The darker-skinned daughter now self-identifies as White, and the lighter-skinned one now self-identifies as Asian.

I have always self-identified as their birth mother, because, you know, I gave birth to them and all. And yet when they were little I was constantly asked by Whites if I was "the nanny," or what country I had adopted them from. I didn't perceive these questions as in any way aggressive--I assumed they were good-natured curiosity, and how else are people supposed to remedy their ignorance if they're not allowed to ask questions? Then again, I'm not very good at picking up on subtle signs of hostility, and am perhaps naive about my assumption that most people have good intentions. And I don't doubt that if my skin were darker I would feel more insulted by constant assumptions that I was the nanny for children that didn't look like me.

I use my married name for everything in real life, but have only published a poem under that name on two special occasions, because in general I don't want to misrepresent my ethnicity to people who can't see me. That feels wrong for several reasons. But when I stopped using my actual maiden name and picked something similar but different as a pseudonym, I didn't realize that so many people would mistakenly assume I was Jewish. Oops. Oh, well. It is actually my Pennsylvania Dutch great-great-grandfather's surname, before it got Americanized.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 02-04-2019 at 12:47 AM. Reason: Non sequitur
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  #22  
Unread 02-03-2019, 06:29 PM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Never mind.

Last edited by Allen Tice; 02-04-2019 at 07:57 AM.
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  #23  
Unread 02-04-2019, 12:38 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Hello Matt

I did mean to post that link, yes. Just forgot. Here it is, it's interesting.

https://frieze.com/article/who-owns-...m#John%20Keene

Quote:
I take it you're saying the figures aren't bad enough because they may not give a true picture. Because if they are a "true" picture -- in the sense that BAME and white poets submit poetry to major "establishment" magazines in proportion to population demographics -- they would indicate that on average a white person is something like 43% more likely to get their poem accepted than a BAME poet -- or my maths is badly off, which is also possible -- which would seem to show systematic exclusion.
No, it was my maths which was badly off. Or something was. It was a stupid thing to say and I suspect I've embarrassed myself and lost the respect of some good people here. I should consider what I say more and stop trying to just win fucking arguments about things that are far more important than the winning of an argument. Apologies. I'm going to take a break for a while and just moderate quietly.

Best to all.
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  #24  
Unread 02-04-2019, 07:52 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Hi Mark,

Your intentions are good. That comes through in what you post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ckv6-yhnIY

Cheers,
John
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  #25  
Unread 02-04-2019, 11:01 AM
Erik Olson Erik Olson is offline
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Yes, I agree. Your intentions did not seem otherwise than good.

P.S. Only language dear moderator, language.
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  #26  
Unread 02-04-2019, 11:02 AM
Susan McLean Susan McLean is offline
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Having read Dave's essay, I think it is not about "Which poets are getting published these days and why?" but "What is the imagination capable of?" I suspect that the answer to the latter question must include "It depends on the poet." All poets have blind spots when it comes to imagining the experience of people whose lives are very different from their own. Someone like Shakespeare, for instance, does a much more convincing job of inhabiting female characters, for example, than Milton does, even though Milton is a very great poet. But we don't expect even Shakespeare to tell us as much about women's lives as a woman writer could, because he would have no way of knowing all aspects of what it means to be female. A woman writer's work will be different, though, both because she is a woman and because she is not Shakespeare. Her writing may be more accurate in some ways, while not being as great as a piece of writing. We need women writers and minority writers and writers of every other background, just as we need Shakespeare. If we get enough writers from every kind of background, they can help to expose one another's blind spots and fill in the missing pieces of experience, so that we all know more fully what it means to be human. Only a tiny number of those writers will be great writers, but one can pick up great insights even from writers who themselves are not great writers.

Dave's essay made me think about my own practice in writing persona poems. I've written quite a few of them, but I notice that I almost always write from a female persona, and most often I am adopting the persona not of a actual person but of a character from myth or literature. Usually what triggers the poem is some connection between the character's experience and my own experience or my interpretation of the character's experience. But there is a freedom to dealing with fictional characters that is not true in the same way of real people. Unless I am writing satire, I hesitate to exaggerate the behavior of real people. But I am not laying that down as a rule that other writers should follow, just as a personal choice. Writers are different from one another; what works for one is not always what others should do.

Susan
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  #27  
Unread 02-05-2019, 01:26 AM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Susan McLean View Post
Having read Dave's essay, I think it is not about "Which poets are getting published these days and why?" but "What is the imagination capable of?" I suspect that the answer to the latter question must include "It depends on the poet." All poets have blind spots when it comes to imagining the experience of people whose lives are very different from their own.
I agree with you, Susan. But identity--even temporarily borrowed identity, as in a persona poem--is not just something we define for ourselves. Identity is also, whether we like it or not, something that other people assign to us. Just as poets have blind spots and biases, readers do, too. So the answer to "What is the imagination capable of?" is not just "It depends on the poet," but also "It depends on the reader." Just as some poets are more persuasive than others when they invite readers to share their imaginative vision, some readers are harder to persuade than others.

When an author from a more-represented category adopts the persona of someone from a less-represented category, the question "Which poets are getting published these days and why?" is definitely relevant to the reader's perception of the writer's motive.

Does the persona-adoption feel like it's being done mainly for an opportunistic author's own benefit, at the possible expense of others who are already less advantaged? Or does it feel like an honest attempt to promote deeper understanding and empathy for a different aspect of the human condition?

Dave's essay is championing the latter, empathetic motive, and I agree that it should be championed. But let's not overlook that a more self-serving and exploitative motive for identity-borrowing exists, too.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 02-05-2019 at 02:07 AM. Reason: fussing
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  #28  
Unread 02-05-2019, 03:04 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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I've been googling for the last ten minutes trying to find the - friend of James Wright? - who died in 2018, with a persona poem in the voice of an old woman getting on a bus. It's both appropriative and empathetic, I think.
When I first discovered African American literature - moving back to the US after twenty years - Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, WEB DuBois, James Baldwin, Richard Wright - it blew the top of my head off. I had thought I had some understanding of African American experience, based on common sense and sympathy. I had no idea. This to my mind tallies with Susan's argument regarding what first-hand voices can offer that second-hand voices almost by definition lack.

Cheers,
John
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  #29  
Unread 02-05-2019, 11:32 AM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
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x
Very good discussion, though not without casualties. Regrettably.

I woke up last night thinking of this thread and of what has been said back-and-forth in the spirit of debate. I echo Mark’s angst and can relate to his sense of frustration with himself even though I don’t entirely understand it. But what I do see in it is the irony: his own frustration and weariness mirrors the heart the article itself: the amorphous nature of self-identity and, on the flip side, others' perception of it. Prufrock. An existential weariness grows. Sometimes, I stop my flailing and sink to the bottom and come face to face with the murky truth: all we have is a free will and the liberty to use it. Ah, but what to do with it?

Unfortunately we will just have to soldier through these times together. It will likely take another generation or two - not so long - before this angst with everything, this fear and loathing, this foreboding feeling, subsides and we wake and forget and understand how to move on. Just as Prufrock predicted. Kinda sorta.

Robert Frost said, “One must have the courage to act on limited knowledge… to go boldly with caution.”

For someone like me who cannot hope to become as learned as many are here (and there and everywhere) the Frost quote gives me comfort. (Here is the entire interview that I extracted it from; 28 enthralling minutes long; some have likely seen it before; well-worth the time and very much in keeping with the topics of politics and self-identity).

Sam, Thanks again for the piece. Thanks for holding up the mirror. By the way, I’d like to hear your reasoning for posting this article. Your view and thoughts would add wisdom to the conversation.
x
x
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  #30  
Unread 02-05-2019, 12:32 PM
James Brancheau James Brancheau is offline
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I've only had time to read the beginning of David Mason's essay, but eagerly look forward to reading the rest of it. So, my response might reflect more than the usual misunderstandings I have here.

Julie, you've stated before that your husband is Chinese-American. Was the Chinese part a particular draw for you? Were you intrigued by "difference"? Culture and race, I suppose you'd call that race, but, whatever, they are two very distinct things. Your blood and what you were born into. Race meaning nothing except other's assumptions about who you are. Which is in fact what we'd call racism. Culture, on the other hand, is a very real thing that possesses both profound beauty and ugliness. It's the ugly part that some have trouble dealing with. (Btw, if your husband is from Taiwan, meaning grew up in Taiwan, they don't quite identify as being Chinese, in that way. Different things. Taiwan is the melting pot that the US claims to be. Lots of Chinese/aboriginal/other cultures calling Taiwan home.)

That said, I think if you're into "identity politics" as a poet, as some unfortunately are (being that it's such a fucking easy target), don't focus on "justice." We have big time super hero movies that do that. Bridge the gap, show us the true individual.

Last edited by James Brancheau; 02-05-2019 at 12:35 PM.
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