What is Asian-American Poetry? - Part Three Edited

(Note: I have edited Part Three here to reflect my present views on the question of What is Asian-American poetry?)

Plunging further into the question of what is "Asian-American poetry," I now have three potential definitions: (1) poetry written by Asian-Americans (the conventional definition), and (2) poetry about Asian Americans -- i.e., poems dealing with Asian-American characters and issues (radical definition #1), and (3) poetry written by Asian-Americans AND poetry about Asian-Americans (radical definition #2).

Here I will say that my proposal to unhinge the poetry from the poet (radical definition #1 - poetry about Asian Americans) is ahistorical, decontextual, and perhaps dangerous. As noted earlier, Asian-American poetry (or for that matter, African-American poetry, Latino-American poetry, Japanese-American poetry, etc.) has NEVER been completely disconnected from the race/ethnicity of the poet.

I contend that this lack of disconnect of poetry from poet is a major part of what has troubled many people about Asian-American poetry and dicussions over race in poetry. It mirrors the larger societal debate of valuing "color-blindness" versus valuing "racial diversity" as well as "meritocracy" versus "representativeness" and perhaps even "racially political" versus "language" poetry. (Of course, you may complicate the terms -- for example, the "representativeness" people might argue that representativeness itself is a merit, while advocates of "language" poetry may argue that the subverting of language is itself a critique of racism and bigotry.)

On poets v. poetry, I don't think that we have come close to dividing the two. I don't know if it is possible or desirable. Illustrations of the fact that we are still fascinated by the identity of the poet include the fact that we still refer to poets by name rather than by poem, still revere poets by name rather than by poem, still publish the names of poets alongside their poems, etc. The idea of the "author" has not been eliminated from our mindsets, remains within our frame of reference. I think that it applies to a certain extent to pretty much everyone -- I would be happy to be shown differently but, for example, I know of no one who always refers to poems by their name and doesn't identify the poet. Dividing the poetry from the poet may also be anti-intellectual in the sense that we would never be able to trace the evolution of an poet's work, assess and compare poets' works as a relative whole, and explore the biographies of poets and the social conditions under which they lived or are living.

At this point, I favor radical definition #2 because of its inclusivity, but the same critique levied against the conventional definition of it being exclusionary and privileging the identity of poets over poetry may be levied against this definition. While it is not as exclusionary as the conventional definition, it does allow Asian-American poets to write, say, poems completely about love and have them count as "Asian-American" poems, while it does not do the same for non-Asian-American poets. Furthermore, each definition has its own set of complexities, as discussed earlier.

Asian American Poets and the Blogosphere

The blogosphere has demographics of its own. I have noticed that there are many Asian-American poets in the blogosphere. There are oodles of Asian-American poet-bloggers, relatively speaking. That is no accident. Because Asian-Americans (arguably) have a relatively high socioeconomic status and because there is a correlation between socioeconomic status and Internet use, proportionately more Asian-Americans use the Internet and thus there are proportionately more Asian-American bloggers and poet-bloggers vis-a-vis the general population. Also, bloggers tend to be younger, and Asian-Americans are a more youthful population, which partly accounts for the fair number of Latino poet-bloggers as well.

Plus, with both Latino Americans and Asian Americans, some ethnic groups fair better than others socioeconomically and there is a wide spectrum of relative wealth and poverty. For example, the lack of Cambodian-American or Thai-American poet bloggers and poets must have some relation to the group's relatively lower socioeconomic status, which has deprived such groups of access to the Internet and blogosphere (of course, the Internet and blogosphere not exactly being the barest of essentials).

At any rate, I have noticed the lack of African-American poet-bloggers, which on the one hand, is not surprising given the relatively lower level usage of the Internet of African-Americans as a group. But on the other hand, given the fact that there are plenty of middle and upper class African-Americans and African American poets as well, one might find the dearth of African-American poet-bloggers unusual. (The disclaimer here is that I may be totally off-base in this observation, but I don't recall any African-American poet-bloggers, or at least poet-bloggers that have openly proclaimed that they are African-American). There are also the anonymous blogs -- in poetry and elsewhere. I often find it difficult to read anonymous blogs without forming some mental impression of the blogger as well -- at least in terms of gender but perhaps of race, ethnicity, etc. as well. But they really could be anyone demographically.

More Thoughts on Audience

I just posted a response on audience in poetry in comments, but it is edited and expanded here:

I would agree that relatively few people can name living writers of any literary genre. I have a problem with the fact that both K-12 and college/university education today places such an emphasis on dead poets over living poets, often to the exclusion of living poets. Perhaps there is an argument that there should be more focus on dead poets, but it shouldn't be 100 to 0 percent.

I don't think that I was entirely clear about my thoughts on audience. The focus of my previous post was on the poet's thought processes while writing a particular poem. I think that, at least subconsciously, most poets have an imagined audience, be it a particular editor, a community of poets, or the public in general.

The distinction between focusing on the poem and focusing on an audience is a difficult one to draw. For example, most American poems obey certain linguistic, syntactical, and spatial conventions that most Americans can comprehend. But even beyond that, with many poems, there are cultural, geographical, religious racial, gender, sexuality, etc. references that are more accesible to a targeted group of people. There are communities of readers who may better comprehend certain poems than others.

Like Nick, I think that audiences cannot be controlled in most circumstances, though I would add the caveat here that there is already a limited audience for contemporary audience in poetry vis-a-vis an audience for novels, for example. In other words, the audience that gravitates to poetry (or to particular poet or set of poems) is fairly circumscribed already. However, I do think that poets can control their own writing, if they choose. I think that much of the time poets choose to do so. Now there is stream of consciousness, surrealism, dream journal type writing that, one can argue, liberates the poet from such control, and that should be acknowledged.

I would agree that all poetry is not high art, though there would then have to be a distinction drawn between "high" and "low" art. Not an impossible distinction to draw, if conscientiously defended.

Should Poets Write for Poets or for Non-Poets?

I have touched upon this subject before. It is a variation of my question on whether Asian-American poets should write for an Asian-American or an non-Asian-American audience. As is often the case with this blog, I didn't provide a definitive answer -- in fact, I think that it may even vary from poem to poem.

I think that most of the readers of this blog know that poets writing today exist in a completely alternate universe, unmoored from the reality of the rest of the world. For example, I have many intelligent graduate/law school friends (or at least I have to say they're "intelligent" in case they're reading this blog ;) ). But I know that most of them can't name 5 living poets. I would venture to wildly guess that 90% of the public cannot name 5 living poets. Poets just ain't that popular nowadays, except in the Trekkie, fan-fiction sense.

Now I don't think that this relative lack of popularity is either right or inevitable. I believe that poetry should be central to American society. So I would argue that poets should write for non-poets in this sense. But I can definitely appreciate the position that poets should not write for non-poets. Thus, I remain undecided in general.

Now what do I mean with all this abstract nonsense about writing for poets vs. writing for non-poets? It is very difficult to define, but I will make an attempt here. I think that "poems for poets" contain a certain conformity to a certain type of form, language, content that is consonant with the perceived acceptability of the poems by fellow poets/editors for publication. Often such poems express metaphysical concerns through specifically rendered descriptions, voiced through upper-middle class language and diction. But even such a generalization is unsatisfactory -- what I mean is poets in a "community" writing for other poets in the "community." The expectations are there, and one just has to conform to them.

If "poems for poets" was hard to define, then "poems for non-poets" is even harder. By "poems for non-poets," I think that I mean poems with more common language and references, that is, poems that are more accessible to the general public. To offer some perhaps inaccurate generalizations as examples: Li-Young Lee, Jane Kenyon, Billy Collins. I am thinking of poetry that makes a conscious attempt to appeal to a wider audience, an audience that is not necessarily well-versed in the developed poet-speak of the "poetry community."

While one side can stereotype the other as "plain, dull, and unoriginal," the other can critique the first position as "artsy-fartsy, self-absorbed, and inaccessible." At any rate, I remain very interested in the question of audience in poetry. I do not think that any poet with an interest in publishing writes without an audience in mind, be it a specific poetry editor or the entire world, if only subconsciously. I think that this imagined audience has some effect on the writing of the poem, though I'm not sure to what extent and how.

The Power of the MFA?

Among other things, Barbara Jane Reyes (http://bjanepr.blog-city.com/read/1080768.htm) insightfully writes, there's a serious fallacy in arguments that go something like: you publish because you are a poet (conversely, you are a poet because you're published). you publish because that is what poets do.

I agree with Barbara that publication does not make a poet. But why? It is not inevitable that I feel this way. Not being a fatalist, I don't think that history is inevitable. And I can imagine a world where publication would make a poet. More essentially, I can imagine a world were an MFA degree would make a poet. It is called Much of the Rest of the World.

In Much of the Rest of the World, you need an advanced degree and/or license to "earn the right" to claim a particular profession as your identity. Lawyers, teachers, doctors, civil engineers, physicists, etc. all need advanced degrees/licenses to lay claim to their identities as such. As anyone who studies the histories of these professions may attest, the phenomenon of requiring advanced learning was not inevitable and evolved over time. For example, until the mid-19th century, most lawyers didn't even need to attend college, and until the early to mid-20th century, many lawyers didn't even need undergraduate degrees to attend law school.

Theoretically, we could conceive of a world in which poets must have an MFA degree to gain publication. The degree would be justified in largely the same way the other professions justify the need for advanced degrees -- an MFA degree is an indicator of dedication to and expertise in the art of poetry. All major publications could agree to condition publication upon an MFA degree. The MFA degree would thereby become much more valuable and powerful. Sure, there may be minor poets who publish in homespun lit mags, but there are also law students who attend non-ABA accredited institutions and people who represent themselves in court. We don't have to take them seriously.

I just described a world that does not currently exist in solid form, but which contains a certain, palpable element of descriptive truth to it, even today. The movement is from the quality of the poem to the status of the poet. If we look at the status of the poet to decide whether to publish and/or give a poet an award, then that makes everyone's job easier. It is much easier to read a first and last name than to read a whole poem or book of poems. No more Cathy Song poems -- all we would need is a "Cathy Song"! I want people to appreciate the power of this short-cut to gain a sense of its dangerous attractiveness.

But this blog is not about ease. And poetry is not about not reading poetry. The MFA can be used as a source of power to exclude, but we must ask ourselves, as with every vocation, whether the power is justified. Here's an interesting question: Should an MFA be a prerequisite to a poet's becoming a poetry professor? At this point, I am not sure. There seems to be an economic argument that, since there are so few openings for poetry professors available, an MFA narrows the pool of qualified applicants and establishes a prima facie case for possession of a relatively higher level of knowledge of poetry that would make for at least a more knowledgeable professor. At the same time, however, we are moving further away from the quality of the poetry, and at any rate, we all know that both the poet with the MFA and the poet who writes "great" poetry (the two being mutually supporting and perhaps becoming indistinguishable in their little collusive marriage) are not necessarily the most helpful teachers.

Point Six - The Forgotten Point

I'd briefly forgotten that Eric had e-mailed earlier and said that I could quote or post from his e-mail, and I replied that I would do so and respond to his remarks. Here's what Eric said:

As regards part 3: one of the things I want to add to the characterization I was making about the non-centrality of Asian-Americans to the American imagination of America is that part of it comes from a natural historical bias towards the East Coast. There, given the relative lack of importance of Asian immigrants and the relative importance of both European and African immigrants and slaves (and the relations between them), and given that the East Coast corridor has been the central site of the American definition of self (1776, the colonies, etc) and of its population and cultural centers through the 1800s, the lack of centrality of Asian-Americans to the "American" story (as it is taught in schools or produced in television shows or political speeches) is actually, if nothing else, comprehensible (if not historically accurate).

What that means, of course, is that some of that will change as the US changes and the stories it tells itself about itself change. For instance, kids growing up in the West get a lot more information about Asian immigration, the railroads, the exclusion acts, etc, in grade school than do East Coasters; likewise they're more likely than East Coasters to have a broad experience of Asian immigrants and Asian-Americans... (and of the differences inside those categories).

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I find the second paragraph hysterical. (Not laughing at Eric here, but at the school curriculum.) I grew up in southern CA, took all the advanced social studies and history classes, and learned absolutely zilch about Asian immigration, the railroads, or the exclusion acts. I don't think I knew I was Asian-American till I graduated from high school. Maybe I didn't check enough boxes growing up.

I don't think that things will change unless Asian-American activists make a concerted effort to challenge the textbooks and curriculum. For any Asian-Americans out therethinking about doing that, though, here is a disclaimer: be prepared to have people in power roll their eyes and dismiss you as a "special interest group" out to establish a separatist agenda. It is a move that I call "a technique of power," in which people in power establish their dominance and then consolidate their hegemony by making a claim of objectivity. But as a political science professor of mine aptly put, all groups are special interest groups. So the group that wants to keep the under-inclusive history textbooks and curriculum is a special interest group in and of itself. They will be left with the primary argument that there just aren't that many Asian-Americans demographically, which is an argument of power that would parodoxically undermine their claims in favor of objectivity and the morality of equality and inclusivity.

Point Five - The Yasusada Hoax Revisited

In what will probably mark a conclusion to this series of posts in reference to Eric H's long and informative, I am responding to Eric's suggestion that we read the poetry of "Araki Yasusada" closely and deal with it seriously. Well, I think I agree with it in principle, but sometimes I wonder...and this will take me away from the Yasusada hoax and into an even more global discussion over poetry.

While I feel strongly about the importance of giving indivdiual poems close readings, I sometimes wonder if poets, and other readers of poetry, pay such close attention to the trees that they miss the forest. My concern here is that we should also think seriously about why poetry should be important to society and why we are reading the poems that we are reading.

The latter question particularly intrigues me. I know full well that no one can read every poem ever written. We must pick and choose. People in power pick and choose, and essentially, they decide what we read and then control the discourse for us. There may be isolated instances of rebellion -- and the blogosphere may greatly assist in the democratization of poetry -- and poets themselves may read more widely. But basically, a narrow set of "experts" building upon the "wisdom" of another narrow set of predecessors generally dictate our reading of poetry.

I think, at its core, that is what the anger of many Asian-American poets, now somewhat dissipated, towards the Yasusada hoax was about. It was an anger directed towards a "poetry establishment" that has never been really thought seriously about Asian-American poetry, either in general or specific Asian-American poets or specific books of Asian-American poetry. Doubled Flowering, in this sense, may have been a source of triumph for Asian-American critics of the hoax, because here was concrete evidence of the non-Asian-Americans' fascination with Asian-ish sounding ideas coupled with the near-complete disinterest in both the historical and contemporary dimensions of Asian-American poetry. The grievances of Asian-American poets could no longer be ignored.

Kundiman Asian American Poets' Retreat

Well, as you can tell, my blog is in a period of relative inconsistency -- "relative" given the fact that I had been posting daily up until the recent busy streak in my schedule. So promoting the Kundiman Asian American Poets' Retreat ain't a bad idea at this point, since it helps maintain the consistency, and more impotantly, I think highly of the organization's enterprise. You should definitely be expecting more posts from me in the coming days and weeks, though.
_______

Kundiman Asian American Poets’ Retreat
July 13 – 17, 2005
University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Deadline for Application: Postmark March 1, 2005

For more information on Kundiman, see http://www.kundiman.org

Introduction

In order to help mentor the next generation of Asian-American poets,Kundiman is sponsoring an annual Poetry Retreat at The University ofVirginia. During the Retreat, nationally renowned Asian American poetswill conduct workshops and provide one-on-one mentorship sessions withparticipants. Readings and informal social gatherings will also bescheduled. Through this Retreat, Kundiman hopes to provide a safe andinstructive environment that identifies and addresses the uniquechallenges faced by emerging Asian American poets. This 5-day Retreat willtake place from Wednesday to Sunday. Workshops will be conducted fromThursday to Saturday. Workshops will not exceed six students.

Writing Workshop

A nationally renowned Asian American poet will facilitate each writingworkshop. Workshops will consist of writing exercises and groupdiscussions on participant poems. At each workshop, participants will beexpected to write and workshop new poems. Participants will have theopportunity to take a workshop with every Faculty member. In order to helpfoster relationships between participants themselves, each participantwill be assigned a home group, and will remain in that home group for theduration of the retreat. The Faculty will rotate in the work-shopping ofeach home group.

Mentoring: Conferring and Connections

Faculty members will schedule one-on-one conferences with participants. Prior to arriving, participants will submit a request indicating theirorder of preference as to which poet they would like to meetone-on-one. Administrators will try to accommodate each applicant’s request.

Faculty

Lawson Inada is third-generation Japanese American, born and raised inFresno, California. He has taught at Southern Oregon State College since1966. For both historical and aesthetic reasons, Lawson Inada is asignificant figure in Asian American poetry and literature. He was one ofthe co-editors of the landmark anthology, Aiiieeeee! An Anthology ofAsian-American Writers, and has participated in efforts to recover writingby earlier Japanese American authors such as Toshio Mori and John Okada.Inada’s collection Before the War: Poems as They Happened (1971) was oneof the first Asian American single-author volumes of poetry from a majorNew York publishing house. Inada won the American Book Award in 1994 forLegends from Camp and was named Oregon State Poet of the Year in 1991. Hehas received a number of poetry fellowships from the National Endowmentfor the Arts.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of "Miracle Fruit" (Tupelo Press),winner of ForeWord Magazine's Poetry Book of the Year Award, the GlobalFilipino Literary Award, and finalist for the Asian American LiteraryAward and the Glasgow Prize. She received her MFA at Ohio State Universityand was the Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute forCreative Writing at UW-Madison. Other awards for her writing include theBoatwright Prize from Shenandoah, The Richard Hugo Prize from PoetryNorthwest, an Associated Writing Programs Intro Award in creativenon-fiction and several nominations for the Pushcart Prize. She isAssistant Professor of English at State University of NewYork-Fredonia--right in the heart of cherry and berry country--where shelives with her mini-dachshund, Villanelle.

Patrick Rosal is the author of Uprock Headspin Scramble And Dive (PerseaBooks). His work has been published in many journals and anthologiesincluding North American Review, Columbia, The Literary Review, and TheBeacon Best 2001. He has been a featured reader at manyvenues in and out of NYC, from Boston to Daytona Beach, as well as inLondon and on the BBC radio’s “World Today.” He is currently AssistantProfessor ofEnglish at Bloomfield College.

Fees & Financial Aid

There is a scholarship fund for those who need assistance. Requests for financial aid should be made after acceptance to the retreat. To keep thecost of the retreat low, participants are not charged fees forworkshops. Room and Board for the retreat is $300.

Application Process

Send three (3) copies of five to seven (5-7) paginated, stapled pages ofpoetry, with your name included on each page. Include a cover letter withyour name, address, phone number, e-mail address and a brief paragraphdescribing what you would like to accomplish at the Kundiman AsianAmerican Poets’ Retreat. Include a SAS postcard if you want an applicationreceipt. Manuscripts will not be returned. No electronicsubmissions, please.

Mail application to:

Kundiman
245 Eighth Avenue #151
New York, NY 10011
Submissions must be postmarked by March 1, 2005

Point Four - Coercive Mimeticism

Well, I guess now we know the answer to my last rhetorical question about keeping up daily blog posts.

Continuing my series of posts on Eric's long and helpful response, I want to comment on this excerpt: There's more to _Doubled Flowering_ than the fact of the hoax; as Kent points out, it was clearly designed to be discovered as a fiction. But the fact of the hoax is so distracting that it keeps people from reading the poetry. This is an ironic reversal of what Rey Chow calls "coercive mimeticism," which is her term for the way in which ethnic writers (all ethnic writers) are forced by the current world-system to consistently give voice to their own ethnic identity (so that African Americans must always speak *as* African Americans, etc).

Personally, I must confess to letting out a prodigious yawn when reading the term "coercive mimeticism." Sometimes, I wonder if the use of "prodigious" vocab of people like myself is really just a turn-off. At any rate, "coercive mimetism" is a useful term. It is fancy-schmancy academic-speak for "forced to talk like an Asian."

As of today, all Asian-American authors, poets and non-poets alike, have made it big by "talking like Asians." (I'm using Rey Chow's above definition of "coercive mimeticism," aka "forced to talk like Asians" of "forced by the current world-system to consistently give voice to their own ethnic identity.") I don't know if I would term it "coercive," though. I think that Asian-American poets and non-poets have made a conscious decision to talk in such a voice and are not victims in the sense that they have tapped into the desire of non-Asian-American readers to read about explorations of identity, so the coercion is not present at this particular point.

Also, I don't think that "the current world-system" is a precise-enough term. In poetry and perhaps elsewhere, I think that we are talking about a very small number of elites who ultimately control the discourse over poetry. This is where the coercion may be present -- if editors and publishers of large publishing houses fail to publish any poems by Asian-American poets that do not give voice to question of "Asian" identity, then society-at-large is forced by virtue of economic coercion to only read such works. But perhaps Chow is referring to Asian-American fiction here, because Asian-American poetry has not even developed to such an extent to effectively deal with this question. In terms of Asian-American poetry, the primary coercion is not "coercive mimeticism" but economic exclusion of publication. That, too, is changing, however, as the start of the 21st century has witnessed the publication of a flurry of new Asian-American books of poetry.

Furthermore, I wonder if you can also call Asian-American poetry NOT dealing with questions of identity as having been a function of coercion as well. That is, you can have a great Neil Aitken or John Yau poem that does not deal with "Asian-American identity" but rather refutes the idea of stereotype through its silence on the issue and the refutation itself could be a function of the coercion of not wanting to be perceived exclusively as an "Asian-American" poet.

A large question here is whether all poetry is "coercively mimetic" in the sense that we are always forced by elites to grapple with questions of identity -- of race, class, gender, etc. Or is it elites? Are our societies ingrained with some form of tribalism that make such questions inevitable? Individuals may trump individuality over race, class, gender, etc., but I know few of us who do not view at least some aspect of life in these terms. Of course, another question would be whether one should work for the elimination or preservation of these distinctions, given that there are costs and benefits to both keeping and discarding such distinctions.

Daily Blog Posts?

How long can I keep this up? How long can I keep posting daily? So far, I've been posting everyday on this blog. Practically all the posts have been about Asian-American poetry. Some of the posts have been long. Relatively few have been short. But, as I'm busier nowadays, I have a feeling that soon my posts may be less frequent. In the meantime, below is an excerpt of a recent post on ranking poets that I was a bit surprised provoked no reaction, either in the form of comments or e-mails as such opinions tend to do. Which must mean I'm totally right! Woo hoo! I've always wanted to be totally right.

Hmmm...rankings and questions of rankings are, of course, very controversial in NCAA basketball and football and perhaps even more controversial with U.S. News and World Report's college and graduate school rankings. In fact, many critics have argued that U.S. News and World Report should not rank colleges and graduate school rankings, because the ranking methodologies are flawed and the idea of ranking itself only encourages ill-feelings and competitiveness between schools. If we made up a ranking of poets, especially of living poets, then the same critique could be levied against these rankings. These arguments are valid.

But I would put forth the counter-argument that rankings of poets may be fair and desirable in poetry, for the same reason that they are fair and desirable for classifying undergraduate and graduate schools, because poets are already ranked. It bears repeating: poets are already ranked, just as undergrads and graduate schools have already been ranked by social conditons of wealth, societal perceptions, institutional histories, pop culture, and power in general. "Prestigious" poets and editors in power rank poets and poetry, just as undergraduate and graduate schools typically rely on high school class rank and SAT scores in admissions decisions and often rank students with class ranks themselves.

Poets are ranked by literary magazines who decide which poems should or should not be published, poetry publishers who decide which books of poetry should or should not be published, poetry critics who decide whether to give a favorable review, general readers of poetry who decide whether or not to purchase a book, and perhaps most importantly, by "prestigious" poets who decide whether to give a poet and her or his poetry their attention and their approval. Poets are even arguably ranked by their own social class and socioeconomic situations, which has given them the education and time to write poetry.

I would assert that there is such a rough hierarchy in Asian-American poetry as well. It goes something like this, from top to bottom: "prestigious" national print magazines, national ethnic print magazines, small press magazines, online publications, individual bloggers who are "prestigious" poets, the rest of the poetry bloggers (including all "azn" poetry bloggers), and vanity press publications. It is more difficult to place state poetry societies and spoken word movements in this hierarchy of wealth and power.

A ranking of poets would help make this hierarchy more open and transparent. It would also make the hierarchy more open to reform say, if people think that Poet X is better than Poet Y but Poet Y is not better than Poet X...By now, you're probably thinking, nah, ranking cannot possibly work! Poets would be at each other's throats, and the rankings would be so subjective anyway. Well, I think the first point is valid, though if true, it is sadly anti-intellectual that poets cannot deal with openness and transparency and have an interesting discussion over the comparative qualities of poetry. The second point is not as valid, because, as I've discussed above, there is already a ranking of poets and poetry, however subjective.

For example, why is it that the blogging world has recently been so interested in Best American Poetry 2004? As David Lehmann correctly suggests in his introduction to BAP 2004, it is at least partly because the series has laid claim to the title of "Best" American Poetry and subsequently has become a best-seller, at least by poetry standards, as opposed to other poetry anthologies and publications. If at least a part of most readers does not believe in the existence of a bestness in poetry, then this anthology would likely not sell nearly as well.

Point Three - Mirrors of the American Imagination

Eric's third explanation for the lack of scholarship on Asian-American poetry is that Asian-Americans do not occupy a central position in the American imagination in general.

I find this point interesting in that it suggests that the "poetry world" often mimics, or mirrors, the "social world" at large. For example, an argument could go: Historical and present discrimination against women has led to fewer female poets being awarded the Pulitzer Prize and read in K-12 classrooms across the nation.

I would agree that Asian Americans have generally occupied an outsider status vis-a-vis the traditional black/white dichotomy, which helps account for the outsider status of Asian-American poets and poetry vis-a-vis more well-know poets and poetry.

Point Two - Poetry: The Paradox of Its Irrelevancy in a Capitalist World

Eric remarks, "Poetry is less important now in academic literary work than it has been for probably 600 years." He then goes on to note that probably 90 percent of the English undergrad curriculum is not devoted to poetry and to lament the difficulty of getting a book of poetry these days.

I agree with his assessment of the relative lack of interest in poetry nowadays, at least in colleges and universities and by other sources of power and wealth. But I wonder why.

I wonder why poetry books tend not to be published as often and don't sell well, the two phenomena being linked. Let's just assume we live in a consumeristic, capitalist world. (I don't know why people would think that we live in a "post-capitalist" world, but I'm willing to be enlightened.)

To me, that would mean that people should read poetry simply on the basis of poetry's relatively short length vis-a-vis other forms of art and literature like novels, non-fiction, drama, film, or even short stories. People have less time nowadays. They are out to make a buck. Logically, I would have assumed, people would turn to poetry. Poetry is quick, fast-paced, New Age. Poetry takes much less time to read than short stories or novels. (Of course, I'm excluding long poems and epics.)

There are many reasons, but I'd like to focus on the problem of individualism in poetry. Poetry's success on the blogosphere is no surprise, given the medium's suitability to shorter works. But a problem is that there appear to be more writers of poetry than readers of poetry, and relatedly, there appears to be too much apathetic individualism among poets and poetry-lovers. We do have to go out there and convince people poetry is worthwhile, sell your work, push harder for bookstores to carry more books of poetry and poetry magazines, and push harder for poetry to be taught K-12 and undergrad. (Short note: I've done so in the past, and needless to say, anti-poetry folks have pushed back...HARD against me. I will discuss it more later on this blog, but this is just a disclaimer for the kiddies who shouldn't try this at home.)

Point One - Why No Lit-Crit on Asian-American Poetry

I've decided to devote the next several days to responding to Eric's many points, one-by-one, for two good reasons: 1) he raises fascinating and informative points, and 2) heck, it buys me some time to think up new stuff to write. :)

Eric suggests that the lack of Asian-American poetry lit-crit results from a major collapse of the academic publishing market and the resulting emphasis on publishing books that sell well, which has tended to push the still-relatively small field of Asian-American poetry into even greater oblivion. Long-time readers of this blog will know that this assertion makes perfect sense to me, because of my belief that both poetry readership and criticism are dictated by economic power as well as deep-seated psychological and philosophical beliefs by professors/scholars/editors over what "good" poetry is and which poets/poems are thus worthwhile to read and seriously consider.

But I don't perceive Asian-American studies folks as merely victims of an uncaring non-Asian-American public. People interested in Asian-American poetry also become perpetrators of lagging book sales and ignorance when they do not believe that the field is worthwhile -- which, of course, doesn't apply to any readers of this blog.

As far as a plan goes to popularize Asian-American poetry, I think that the first step is to attract the interest of non-Asian-American scholars/poets interested in "Asian poetry." For example, there has been far more critical work done on Chinese poets than on Chinese-American poets. I think that Asian-Americanists must make a more concerted to build alliance with such scholars. The second step would then be to go the other natural route -- which is to encourage Asian Americans to take a greater interest in poetry. Such work is happening already in the form of the Asian American Writers Workshop as well as the newly established organization Kundiman.

If I disagree anywhere with Eric here, I would say that I don't believe that building a community of scholars for a book-length work is necessarily time-bound. For example, let us take the rise of "Paris Hilton"; "Paris Hilton" is a historical anomaly in the sense that "Paris Hilton" was unforeseeable to any of us just a few years ago. Now there is a vibrant community of writers discussing "Paris Hilton," both pro and con, in articles, books, etc. There is much more "Paris Hilton"-mania than Asian-American poetry-mania, even though "Paris Hilton" is a much more recent and arguably inconsequential phenomena than Asian-American poetry.

My basic point is that Asian-American poets and professors of Asian-American poetry must not cave in to fatalism and must pursue their agenda, just as Paris Hilton has eloquently and ambitiously pursued hers -- of course, this recommendation is referring to style, not substance. There is no shame in trying to advance a field of academic study; it is what Shakespeare and Pound professors/scholars have done for years and have done successfully. If one has never read any Asian-American poetry, there is absolutely no reason why Shakespeare should be studied instead of Asian-American poetry. (I'm playing with logic there in that last sentence; basically, I mean to say that an intellectual refutation of Asian-American poetry in favor of Shakespeare must entail a critical readership and engagement with both, which has not taken place yet.)

Comments on Asian-American Poetry and the Yasusada Hoax

I was just going through my archives and noticed that I missed some very interesting comments from an "Eric H" a while back. I think I know who it is (how many Eric H's know this much about Asian-American poetry?!), but I won't speculate. Anyhow, I'm hoping that he is still reading this blog, since they are thorough, informative, and quite wonderful. I'll post them here and will probably respond in the next post:

"Hi, Roger, This isn't exactly a response to this post in particular, though I suppose it's the one that pushed me over the edge from reading to writing. I find blog commenting impossible, though, so what follows is likely to be a ridiculous mess.

In any case: 1) Why isn't there a work of lit crit on A-A poetry?

I can think of a few variables in play here: First, the academic book publishing market has undergone a major collapse in the past 5 years. Literally hundreds of books will never see the light of day because of cuts in university press budgets (Michigan, for instance, canceled its entire Asian Studies/Asian-American line; SUNY Press has gone from publishing 100 books a year to 60, which means that 40 books a year simply never appear). These cuts have been accompanied by an increased emphasis on producing academic books that sell; some university presses barely publish books on literature anymore. Biographies of Shakespeare sell well, of course, but books of criticism on authors for whom there isn't an established constituency have a hard time selling. If I write about Ezra Pound, well, there are a few hundred or more EP scholars out there who might buy the book, plus thousands of scholars of modernism who will think about it. Until there are enough Asian-American scholars (not to mention A-A poetry scholars, but that's another problem) to create a constituency for academic work books in the field will have a hard time getting published unless they take an Ethnic Studies or Postcolonial Studies approach, or focus on narrative authors that people have heard of (Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, etc). Only authors who are already well known (Lisa Lowe, for instance) can sell a book that deals with relatively marginal narrative authors or texts (Lowe's Immigrant Acts has a lot of stuff on Dictee, for instance).

Building a community of scholars/readers for book-length work will take longer than 30 years (or 125, if you're counting from 1880). That said, there are hundreds of academic articles on Asian-American poetry. Steve Yao (Hamilton College), a friend of mine (some of my best friends are Asian-American!!), writes really good stuff.

2) Poetry is less important now in academic literary work than it has been for probably 600 years. Not just Asian-American poetry; all poetry. We're at the tail end of the prose narrative dominance of aesthetic work that really began sometime around the development of the novel... I say "tail end" because we have no idea how long this period will last, but of course it could be that 1000 years from now they'll be saying that we were right in the "middle period" of narrative prose. Who knows. In any case I would guess that 90 percent of the undergrad curriculum in English at most universities is devoted to prose, drama, or film, and most of that is to prose fiction (whereas 100 years ago prose fiction was just stuff you read for fun outside class).

In any case it's hard enough getting a book published these days; to get it published on poetry is damn near impossible unless you're a name, and to do it about poets (contemporary or dead) that most people haven't heard of is really outside the bounds of the imaginable. Perhaps the best solution is for a relatively famous scholar to write such a book, since s/he would be able to get it published and that might convince other publishers that such a thing was worth doing.

I wonder how many literary critical books have been published on Chicano/a/Latino/a Poetry? On African-American poetry? Probably not that many.

3) But this gets me to my next point: part of this is particular to the Asian-American situation, and it has to do w/ the interesting/strange status of Asian-Americans in the American imagination (especially East Asians). This next bit is totally foreshortened and not nuanced enough but here's part of why that is: I think that it's easier for most Americans (not just white Americans, most Americans of all races) and indeed most Westerners to become interested in things (literature among them) that seem to them to be directly or indirectly connected to notions of the Western self (or: most people are interested themselves). And that "self," I think, is constituted in the current imaginary not only by the "home" culture (Euro-America, whatever), but also by those nations/cultures/ethnicities that have been explicit subjects of Euro-American domination through colonialism/imperialism: Africa (and African Americans), south Asia (given the British history), southeast Asia (but less so, b/c mainly the Dutch and French had colonies there, and I'm talking about the Anglo-American context), and Latin America (b/c there was the exploitation/genocide of native people, plus the standard imperialist history of revolution, etc, not to mention immigration to the US).

And EVEN THOUGH many of these things are true of East Asia (that is, Western imperialism happened in East Asia, militarily and economically, plus there's the exploitation of Asian labor in the history of the US, immigrant acts, internment camps, etc) in all kinds of ways something about East Asia keeps most Westerners from exactly recognizing "them" as part of "us"; for reasons that I spend a lot of time writing about but can't be sure I totally understand, East Asians somehow are understood to be extraneous to a complete self-understanding of the West by the West.

I'm getting tired. That last paragraph doesn't really even begin to scratch the surface of the problem. Let me try one more time: It makes sense to most Americans (of all races) to read about African-Americans b/c they recognize a (political, economic) complicity between their own identities and those of African-Americans, between their narratives and those of African-Americans (and when I say "their" I include African-Americans there: that is, that it also makes sense to most African-Americans to think of themselves as African-Americans and to be interested in literary works that speak to African-American experiences). But in the case of Asian-Americans, especially East Asians, that same connection isn't made. Because that form of racism occasionally "benefits" Asian-Americans (who get to, for instance, be treated as though they have no visible race, which is to say they get to be treated as "white"), it doesn't register in the same way that racism directed against African-Americans does. But of course it's just as racist. And trickier, b/c it's harder to see.

Anyway--all that above as a way of explaining why I think that there's no literary critical book on Asian American poetry.

OK, last thing, about Yasusada: There's more to _Doubled Flowering_ than the fact of the hoax; as Kent points out, it was clearly designed to be discovered as a fiction. But the fact of the hoax is so distracting that it keeps people from reading the poetry. This is an ironic reversal of what Rey Chow calls "coercive mimeticism," which is her term for the way in which ethnic writers (all ethnic writers) are forced by the current world-system to consistently give voice to their own ethnic identity (so that African Americans must always speak *as* African Americans, etc). With Yasusada, what the book ends up "mimicking" is the fact of the hoax itself. But just as insisting that Anchee Min's novels teach us about the reality of the "Chinese immigrant experience" invovles a certain kind of NOT reading Anchee Min's actual words (because it closes off the right of the text to speak to something other than the ethnic origin of its author), the insistence on Yasusada as hoax is a convenient way for most people who talk about the project (and calling it "Yasusada" is part of the problem, since the hoax author's last name is Araki in any case) to actually not have to read or deal seriously with the poetry. You can't read the poetry without thinking of the hoax, of course, but the hoax is not the alpha and omega of the text; otherwise, why should there be a text at all?

This has gone on forever. Sorry for taking up all your time, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to think through these ideas.

Eric H."

"One last p.s.

Yunte Huang's _Transpacific Displacement_ has, I think, two chapters on Asian-American poetry (one on English translations of Chinese poetry, and one or two on the Pound/Fenollosa/Lowell triangle), which is better, I suppose, than nothing. And I hear that his next book has a chapter on Araki Yasusada...

Also, I'm fairly sure there's a book in the works that collects essays on Araki Yasusada... leading to the possibly astonishing irony that the first book devoted fully to "Asian-American" poetry will be on an author whose status as Asian-American is completely up in the air. That fact would allegorize in a fairly devastating way the drama of Asian-American racial invisibility.

Eric H."

Asian American Issues of Poetry Magazines

The Indiana Review recently did a "special" issue on Asian-American poets. The issue of "Asian-American issues" presents a conundrum analogous to having February as "Black History Month" or May as "Asian Pacific American Heritage Month." (I don't think that South Asians have a "history month," and I'm not exactly sure why.)

On the one hand, you are segregating an entire ethnic group. But on the other hand, without these months, you might under-include, or entirely exclude, the histories or poetries of minorty groups. I had a history teacher who told us that he did not believe in Black History Month, because blacks should not be segregated like that.

I think I have less of a problem with Asian Pacific American Heritage Month than with Black History Month, because the under-inclusion or exclusion of Asian Pacific American history is so much more severe. I think, from K-12, I was literally taught nothing about Asian American history. I learned it all in college. Similarly, I don't have too much of a problem with "Asian-American poetry" issues, though we might want to ask ourselves why Asian-American poets need these special issues and whether the problem of underrepresentation may be better remedied by greater inclusion in "regular" issues.

Ranking the Poets

Ok, I feel like the last couple posts have been a little bland and repetitive. That happens when you play it safe and don't make enough of an effort to offer original and perhaps provocative ideas. It's ok if this blog was solely intended for personal friends and family -- they already know all about my blandness and repetitiveness :) -- but I have to keep reminding myself that I want this blog to be fun and different. So here goes:

I've been wondering whether it is possible or desirable to rank poets hierarchically, allegedly on the basis of the quality of their poetry, sort of like NCAA sports teams or U.S. News and World Report's annual college and graduate school rankings. Well, the answer to my first question, as evidenced by the two examples, is that it is possible to, say, put Marilyn Chin at #3 and T.S. Eliot at #8. Anyone can rank.

But is it desirable? Hmmm...rankings and questions of rankings are, of course, very controversial in NCAA basketball and football and perhaps even more controversial with U.S. News and World Report's college and graduate school rankings. In fact, many critics have argued that U.S. News and World Report should not rank colleges and graduate school rankings, because the ranking methodologies are flawed and the idea of ranking itself only encourages ill-feelings and competitiveness between schools. If we made up a ranking of poets, especially of living poets, then the same critique could be levied against these rankings. These arguments are valid.

But I would put forth the counter-argument that rankings of poets may be fair and desirable in poetry, for the same reason that they are fair and desirable for classifying undergraduate and graduate schools, because poets are already ranked. It bears repeating: poets are already ranked, just as undergrads and graduate schools have already been ranked by social conditons of wealth, societal perceptions, institutional histories, pop culture, and power in general. "Prestigious" poets and editors in power rank poets and poetry, just as undergraduate and graduate schools typically rely on high school class rank and SAT scores in admissions decisions and often rank students with class ranks themselves.

Poets are ranked by literary magazines who decide which poems should or should not be published, poetry publishers who decide which books of poetry should or should not be published, poetry critics who decide whether to give a favorable review, general readers of poetry who decide whether or not to purchase a book, and perhaps most importantly, by "prestigious" poets who decide whether to give a poet and her or his poetry their attention and their approval. Poets are even arguably ranked by their own social class and socioeconomic situations, which has given them the education and time to write poetry.

I would assert that there is such a rough hierarchy in Asian-American poetry as well. It goes something like this, from top to bottom: "prestigious" national print magazines, national ethnic print magazines, small press magazines, online publications, individual bloggers who are "prestigious" poets, the rest of the poetry bloggers (including all "azn" poetry bloggers), and vanity press publications. It is more difficult to place state poetry societies and spoken word movements in this hierarchy of wealth and power.

A ranking of poets would help make this hierarchy more open and transparent. It would also make the hierarchy more open to reform say, if people think that Poet X is better than Poet Y but Poet Y is not better than Poet X...By now, you're probably thinking, nah, ranking cannot possibly work! Poets would be at each other's throats, and the rankings would be so subjective anyway. Well, I think the first point is valid, though if true, it is sadly anti-intellectual that poets cannot deal with openness and transparency and have an interesting discussion over the comparative qualities of poetry. The second point is not as valid, because, as I've discussed above, there is already a ranking of poets and poetry, however subjective.

For example, why is it that the blogging world has recently been so interested in Best American Poetry 2004? As David Lehmann correctly suggests in his introduction to BAP 2004, it is at least partly because the series has laid claim to the title of "Best" American Poetry and subsequently has become a best-seller, at least by poetry standards, as opposed to other poetry anthologies and publications. If at least a part of most readers does not believe in the existence of a bestness in poetry, then this anthology would likely not sell nearly as well.

Marilyn Chin's "How I Got That Name"

Is Marilyn Chin's "How I Got That Name" racist? When I was writing my thesis on Chinese-American poetry and the American political imagination, a professor of mine, who shall remain nameless (not my advisor), asked this question. It stunned me. In retrospect, I imagine that it was exactly the kind of provocative question that a careful reader of the poetry and my paper should have asked, but at the time, I was really taken aback and not pleased.

For those not in the know, Marilyn Chin's "How I Got That Name" is one of the most important poems in Asian-American literature. (The poem is on the Academy of American Poets website if anyone is interested.) In the poem, Chin reflects upon being named after Marilyn Monroe and refers to Marilyn Monroe as "some tragic white woman/ swollen with gin and Nembutal." I took it as an offbeat, tongue-in-cheek reference in line with the tone of the rest of the poem. But this professor thought the line was racist, though interestingly, this professor did not question whether Chin's characterizations of her father as "a tomcat in Hong Kong trash --/ a gambler, a petty thug" was equally racist.

Actually, I think that I was "not pleased," not because of the question per se, but because this professor happened to have a particular distaste for Asian-American studies/politics and Asian-American poetry, at least IMHO. I won't drone on about it here -- there was a movement to establish an Asian-American studies program, but things didn't exactly pan out -- but as many of you know, the success of theses and papers depends greatly on the support of professors/scholars in your particular field of interest. (So you're lucky Barbara, to be living in SF and having the support there!)

Returning to my original question, I don't think that the poem was racist against Marilyn Monroe because of its context. If anything, the reference was self-deprecating, as is much of the rest of the poem. I think that it is more anti-men, particular anti-Chinese American men, but it is also a critique of partiarchy and the critique is personal, usually singling out specific men and not unreasonably demonizing an entire group.

By the way, if one speaks of poets who need more critical work done on them, one must include Marilyn Chin on the list. If I were to violate my principles of trying to focus on the poetry as opposed to the poet and trying not to overgeneralize, I would short-list Chin as one of the five best American poets of the second-half of the 20th century, not knowing exactly who the other four would be. By "best" here, I mean originality in subject matter, language, and tone -- the fusing of the three into a unique and provocative combination. The only mistake in Chin's rise in the poetry world is that it has not been accompanied by sufficient intellectual, analytical, and critical work on her poetry.

Non Asian American Readers of Asian American Poems

I've been wanting to make this post for a while, and now seems to be the appropriate time in light of the flow of the discussion on this blog. I have wondered about the readings of non-Asian American readers of Asian American poetry. (And I have also wondered about the reverse as well: the readings of Asian American readers of non-Asian American poetry, which I will address in a future post.)

I do think that there are some references in Asian American poems that will be more accessible to Asian-American readers/editors than non-Asian American readers/editors, but it is difficult to tell which ones. Part of the difficulty stems from the fact that my previous claim is a qualified, majoritarian one. By "majoritarian," I am referring to it applying to the majority of readers/editors from my own experience. But I think that it is definitely possible for a non-Asian American reader/editor to "get" a poem more than an Asian American reader/editor.

One related issue, which is also a recurring theme of this blog, is getting non-Asian Americans interested in Asian American poetry, and Asian American studies, in general. I am interested in the idea of making a political move towards inclusivity. As some of you know, Asian American studies or literature classes tend to be populated by, guess who, Asian Americans! Tah dah! I think that non Asian Americans should at least always feel welcome in Asian American literature/studies classes.

But I'm drifiting. Returning to the focus of this post, I think that this issue also relates Korean-American readers of Chinese-American poems, for example, or Filipino-American readers of Japanese-American poems. In comments, GK helpfully posted two of his poems -- claiming that the poem with fewer "ethnic" or "cultural" references is more generally accessible than the poem with more such references. But Alberto noted that the poem with more "ethnic" or "cultural" references was not necessarily less accessible to him, as a Spaniard, a reader in Spain. So the question of audience and audience comprehension, so to speak, is quite complicated, since every reader/editor has different tastes.

But I believe that the question of audience comprehension is a relevant and important one. I don't think that tastes in poetry are purely individual, and really, I don't think anyone does. Language is one way that a reader of poetry is either included/excluded. But I'm interested in the question of why, for example, "we" generally know, read, and care about Ashbery, Berryman, Plath, Collins, Pinsky, etc. -- or going farther back -- Yeats, Marvell, Shakespeare, etc. and far less about Asian-American poets. The "we" is in quotes, of course, because it's not in reference to readers of this blog. :) It's back to the question of books sales, large publishing houses, colleges and universities, public and private K-12 sales, and publicity in general.