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There is among us a poet, a middle-aged white guy named Michael Derrick Hudson. Mr. Hudson wrote a poem, title: “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve.”
That’s the title. I shall refer to it as “The Bees, etc.” The poem itself isn’t much longer than its title: 178 words, organized in 13 stanzas of one or two lines each, for a total 20 lines.
“Organized” is actually too strong a word. Like most of what is published as poetry nowadays, “The Bees, etc.” is free verse. It has neither rhyme nor meter. “Playing tennis with the net down,” was Robert Frost’s judgment on free verse. “‘Free verse’?” sniffed G.K. Chesterton. “You might as well call sleeping in a ditch ‘free architecture.’”
Free verse even at its best is really just rhythmic prose. Nothing wrong with that, and I’m not actually as stern about the matter as Frost and Chesterton were.Rhythmic prose can be very effective.
“The Bees, etc.” is, however, not free verse at its best. It has no rhythms that I can detect. Not only is “The Bees, etc.” unrhymed, non-metrical, and non-rhythmic, it has no structure. It’s not built from couplets, tercets, quatrains, or quintets. It’s not a sonnet, a sestina, a ballade, pantoum, villanelle, or Pindaric ode. In fact it’s just ten prose sentences arbitrarily broken at nineteen points, the twenty resulting fragments printed each on its own line. The stanza breaks are as arbitrary as the line breaks. The fourth sentence, for instance, begins with the words, “But they look so perfect together …” There is a stanza break between the words “so” and “perfect.” “But they look so,” new stanza, “perfect together.”
Why? Beats me. Five’ll get ya eight if you asked Mr. Hudson why, he’d reply: “Why not?”
What’s the poem about? Well, in the first five of his ten sentences, the poet is watching through a magnifying glass a bee pollinating flowers. In sentences five and six he wonders why he’s doing this. In sentence seven he expresses generaldiscontent with his life, comparing it to a vacation in which he is the incompetent tour guide. Sentences eight, nine, and ten are send-ups of the kinds of things tour guides say.
Why am I telling VDARE.com readers about this poem? Well, Mr. Hudson — the poet — is, as I began by telling you, a white guy. He wanted to get his poem published, so he submitted it to poetry magazines and literary journals.
![rsz_ps_cover_2014_fall_front2[1]](https://www.vdare.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/rsz_ps_cover_2014_fall_front21.jpg)
After forty rejections, Mr. Hudson changed strategy. Instead of submitting the poem under his actual name, he made up a Chinese-sounding pen-name, Yi-fen Chou, and submitted it under that name.
There were nine rejections. Then an old and respectable literary magazine named Prairie Schooner, published quarterly by the English department of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, accepted the poem for publication. They printed it with the pen-name Yi-fen Chou in their fall 2014 issue.
The comparison of the forty rejections with the nine suggests, though it does not prove, that the Chinese pseudonym helped the poem get accepted. Nonwhite privilege, see?
So far, so good. Things got better for Mr. Hudson, though. Every September the publisher Scribner’s issues an anthology of the best American poems published the past year. I used to buy it. The latest one I have on my shelf is for 1998, which was about the time I stopped reading contemporary poetry.
Well, “The Bees, etc.” was selected for this year’s volume; and there it is in The Best American Poetry 2015, $10.44 paperback from Amazon.com.
“The Bees, etc.” was selected for the anthology by editor Sherman Alexie, himself a poet, prose writer, and filmmaker. Mr. Alexie [Email him] is an American Indian. His poems, prose, and films are all about being an American Indian. Yes, we are in the precious little world of identity narcissism here. Where else would we be, when talking about contemporary poetry?
So Mr. Alexie, the American Indian editor, chose this poem by a white guy named Hudson writing under a Chinese pen-name, for this prestigious anthology he was editing. Afterhe’d chosen it and notified the poet, Michael Hudson wrote back revealing his true identity.
This presented Mr. Alexie with heap big dilemma. Quote from him:
I had to keep that pseudonymous poem in the anthology because it would have been dishonest to do otherwise. If I’d pulled the poem then I would have been denying that I gave the poem special attention because of the poet’s Chinese pseudonym.
If I’d pulled the poem then I would have been denying that I was consciously and deliberately seeking to address past racial, cultural, social, and aesthetic injustices in the poetry world.
[Yi-Fen Chou: White author under fire after using Asian pen name to be published more often, By Justin Carissimo, The Independent, September 7, 2015]
Did you get that? Mr. Alexie admits that he selected poems for this anthology not, or not just, for their poetic merits, but to, quote, “address past racial, cultural, social, and aesthetic injustices in the poetry world.” This fortifies one’s suspicion that Prairie Schooner also selected the poem for publication on social-justice principles; or, to put it another way, on the basis of nonwhite privilege.
Having admitted it, Mr. Alexie ties himself in knots trying to de-admit it. His apologia runs to 2,800 words; read it for yourself at the blog for The Best American Poetry 2015: Sherman Alexie Speaks Out on The Best American Poetry 2015, September 7, 2015.
This little incident caused a huge stir in Social-Justice circles. A black poet named Danez Smith, who writes poems about being black, told the Independent that:
Michael’s theatre has already taken up space a writer of color could have filled, his antics trivialize the experience of people of color, of growing up with a name that many white Americans refuse to fit in their mouths.
Asian-American activists, of course, were choking on their noodles. Several accused Mr. Hudson of performing in yellowface. Korean-American poetess Franny Choi, who writes poems about being Korean-America–and also, to be fair, about her vagina–vented thus:
For Asian-Americans, changing our names is a strategy to survive a racist and nativist America. Michael Derrick Hudson’s pseudonym is cultural appropriation at its purest — it’s stealing from the struggle of people of color for a white man’s personal gain.
Now, we know to a good probability that Mr. Hudson’s poem only got published at all because of nonwhite privilege; and we know from Mr. Alexie’s own pen that nonwhite privilege boosted it into the Scribner anthology. As a commenter at Mediaite.com put it very succinctly:
Racist people accuse person who exposed them as racists of being racist.[ White Man Uses Pen Name ‘Yi-Fen Chou’ to Get His Poem Published, by Alex Griswold, , September 9th, 2015]
That about sums it up.
I’m a poetry lover. I can recite yards of the stuff, some of it in languages I can’t speak conversationally. Three whole shelves of my study are populated by poetry books.
I’m going to take a break now for some quiet weeping.
On a more cheerful note, this story about a guy pretending to be Chinese to get his poem published reminded me of an actual Chinese poem.
This poem is by a talented but sadly neglected Chinese poet of the T’ing Dynasty, name of Tai Yüeh-han. I read my own translation aloud on Radio Derb [33m 10s] accompanied by background Chinese music:
Was your poem returned with apology?
Just practice a little psychology.
Pretend you’re nonwhite;
Things will soon be all right,
And you’ll be in the Scribner anthology!
John Derbyshire [email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjectsfor all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him. ) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. His most recent book, published by VDARE.com com is FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle).His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com.
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Good God- ya just can’t make this stuff up ! The Identity Politics lunacy has reached and passed the point where it possible to parody.
Thank you, thank you Derb for bringing this gem of our Cultures descent into Bonkerishness to wider attention.
Two possible benefits thereby:
1) These deluded, repellent, pathetic Fools might suffer pangs of embarrassment sufficient to prompt an agonized re-appraissal of their mis-spent lives and thus efforts to rejoin the Sane on Planet Earth. Damn scant chance of that, to be sure, but still a chance.
2) Immunization ( if any more were needed ) against the rest of us ever taking these wretches for being anything other than what they are : a pathogen in our Culture.
Someone ought to award a medal to the nine publications which rejected “Bees” even as the work of “Yi-fen Chou”.
Non-white privileges are actually protected class privileges.
Many white people are at least one of the protected classes of diversity.
Also, using the term “privilege” when describing biased selections of poetry is an abuse of the term.
A true privilege is an advantage only a government can give to someone, usually in exchange for votes or party support.
The biased selection of poetry here is a private benefit received based on shared values of protected class people.
SJW’s like to confuse people by conflating the meaning of a government privilege with any benefits derived from good social skills, shared values, and intelligence.
It’s cute how the yellow chick appropriated black skruggle (itself more a function of Jewish and white liberal efforts than black ones, but at least blacks actually endured some suffering) for herself. “Bravery of love” aside, I wonder how much mileage yellows actually get out of this stuff with normal people. I suspect it isn’t much.
Thank you John Derbyshire! Very funny whilst also being very sad. This seems like a good strategy to get published. I hope many more folks will try it which may eventually lead to some positive changes. Not very likely, but we can hope.
The honest thing is to simply have a prize that only Chinese are eligible for, and so on. I think there was a European author(of gay erotica) who won a prize intended for Native Americans a few years ago.
I don’t know about poetry or music, but I have read it speculated that no one can come up with Mozart quality music because the low hanging tunes have all been done. I suppose to write really good poetry now you have to be operating at a level of sophistication of a different order to what almost anyone can appreciate. Maybe poetry is like that, or maybe the piece was selected as fresh an exciting because the uber-interpretation was reading things into it. At a certain stage it is beyond the old forms
I would bet that job applications with obvious sounding minority or foreign names get more attention.
I share Mr. Derbyshire’s lachrymose assessment of the disheveled state of Mnemosyne’s daughters.
Here’s the frog that sticks in my craw:
All I ever heard in college (late 1970s) and grad school (early to late 1980s) was how Western Civilization and all its forms are disgusting imperialist endeavors, riddled with hate and oppression, best sooner than later thrown on the ash heap.
So why is it, one wonders, that these SJWs and precious snowflakes and navel-gazers even bother to go through the motions of things like Literature, Poetry, and Art? Why do they want to wear the mantle of the white man’s horrible horrible juju? Why not just throw it all out of the window, like Binky’s galoshes, and get on with the really important stuff, like policing and punishing micro-aggressions or inventing and inflicting new genders?
Sean said: “I suppose to write really good poetry now you have to be operating at a level of sophistication of a different order to what almost anyone can appreciate.”
Well, I’m still waiting for someone to write a Homeric recapitulation of the 20th century from a demographic realist angle.
So imagine my surprise when a commenter at Taki’s gave it something of a spin just the other day.
Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus’ son,
that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.
Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades,
and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures,
for so were the counsels of Zeus fulfilled from the day
on which the son of Atreus, king of men,
and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.
And while you’re at it, Muse,
sing of the rage of the SJW gods themselves,
so petulant and so powerful here on their new Olympus of PC,
and of the rage of those few true humans left,
impotent and useless though they have become.
While you are singing, O Muse,
sing also of the rage of Caucasian people,
condemned to Hades by the murderous rapacity of the tribe of Ethiopia,
urged on by the baneful counsel of Eris and Plutus.
Oh, and sing of me, O Muse,
sing of my rage, yes, of my rage, O Muse,
small and insignificant though that rage might be
when measured against the anger of the immortal PC gods,
or when compared to the wrath of Achilles.
So sing O Muse, sing the lament,
and sing to high Olympus the death knell
of all that was beautiful and wise.
Sing, O Muse of the Death of the West,
sing loud and long while ears are left to hear.
And this, my friends, is why we call him “The Derb”.
If any of the people involved in this farce were to read Mr. Derbyshire’s article, they’d be reduced to a quivering, sputtering child. Well done, sir. Well done.
Get a load of this:
Ode to My Armpit Hair
Video Link
You suppose she’ll come around to Odeing her pubic hair?
————-
“For Asian-Americans, changing our names is a strategy to survive a racist and nativist America. Michael Derrick Hudson’s pseudonym is cultural appropriation at its purest — it’s stealing from the struggle of people of color for a white man’s personal gain.”
Survive?
So, what would happen if she didn’t call herself ‘Frannie’? She would be sent to the gulag?
For someone whose shtick caters mostly to privilege white people, her gripe is pretty hilarious.
She is actually serving the privilege of white people who like to entertain themselves as ‘progressives’ fighting white privilege. You see them all around. These progressive white hipsters who live in college towns and gentrified neighborhoods but who always bitch about ‘white privilege’. Since Asians are copycats and imitators, it looks like Little Orphan Frannie has appropriated the politics of bashing ‘white privilege’ without understanding that it is a game that privileged white people play. It’s like Burning Man festival.
She is their yellow jester. She think they are laughing with her, but it’s really at her.
And I must say her shtick is pretty amusing. Here’s this geeky asian girl who loos like a rabbit. She is the product of privileged elite university but she ‘appropriates’ the style of standup comics and rap music to make herself seem tough, edgy, and in-your-face.
But the effect is like watching a mouse pretending to be a badger. It’s ridiculous.
But if she’s really opposed to privilege, why does she hang around privileged settings created by and mostly inhabited by white people? Why doesn’t she go to Haiti or Detroit or some African country? Of course, the likes of her would be kicked around and abused by blacks, browns, and even fellow yellows. The only people who treat her nice are privileged whites, but since they flatter themselves as ‘anti-white privilege’ whites, she caters to their conceit by bashing ‘white privilege’ in a setting of total white privilege that shields her and rewards her.
She bitches about whiteness but even her anti-whiteness is a lame imitation of anti-white political correctness taught by privileged white elites who think they are so special cuz they damn white privilege(from their white privileged position).
Btw, if the world is so filled with problems and poor/oppressed people who need help and support, isn’t it rather decadent and privileged to yammer endlessly about one’s vagina, armpit hair, and etc? What’s next? Her nostril hair and poop stains on her underwear? I mean it sounds like privilege to me. So many people in America of all colors are struggling to make ends meet, but this product of some elite college is pretending to be progressive by yapping poetry about her vagina, armpit hair, and whatnot. If she was more self-reflective, she might see the irony of her situation. But her specialty is ‘slam poetry’ that is short on introspection and big on making self-righteous noise about how “I’m so right and the world is so wrong.”
Besides, if we want ethnic humor, there’s Don Rickles:
Video Link
I think this is her:
Same funny rabbit-face.
She bitches about how white people are evil but her ilk come to live in a nation built by white people. Why didn’t her family move to India or China? If she feels whites are so evil, why partake and gain benefit from the evil work of whites?
What a spoiled brat. But then… the irony is she learned to hate white people from the radical politics of white privilege that prevails in elite colleges. And we know Asians are grinds and drones who copy and imitate. She is a good teacher’s pet of privileged white professors who play at attacking white privilege, the very thing that they have in spades.
It seems that nonwhites really spend a lot of time obsessing over what white people think. Meanwhile, this is the first time I’m hearing of any of these fine artists.
Well Prof. MacGowan, possibly the leading authority on William Carlos Williams, was uninterested in rehashing the merit of free verse poetry when I accidentally revealed I didn’t belong in the English Department, but I will always remember that “No one debates that anymore.” My thesis is that the glory of modern poetry is the quality of criticism it inspired, and its capstone a book called The Pound Era. Modernism was the most self-consciously experimental era of poetry probably ever, and the best of it is aesthetic in a mainly enigmatic way. Now art didn’t qualify unless it was authentically inventive first of all, and no one was sure if it deserved attention until someone figured out how to say interesting and coherent things about it in a very sophisticated, learned manner, so that the measure of great poetry became the caliber of the critics who argued in its favor. Same as it ever was, now though the centrality of critics was laid bare, and with this difference: rank ordering the caliber of contemporary critics was entirely new, and by definition couldn’t really be done, because the authorities of contemporary taste don’t have contemporary authorities. Hence a lot of people mistakenly understood Wallace Stevens to be obviously and consistently great, because Harold Bloom loved him so much, and Harold Bloom was the only critic boorish enough to appoint himself the authority of authorities of taste, repeatedly, again and again and again for several decades. But some of us are lucky enough to know better in retrospect, and intuitively understand that the true genius is the one who doesn’t need the opinions of others to get his writing going, and doesn’t waste words naming his rivals, because he has none.
““For Asian-Americans, changing our names is a strategy to survive a racist and nativist America. Michael Derrick Hudson’s pseudonym is cultural appropriation at its purest — it’s stealing from the struggle of people of color for a white man’s personal gain.”
Survive?
So, what would happen if she didn’t call herself ‘Frannie’? She would be sent to the gulag?”
Apparently Asian women in America who do not have Western sounding first names are sent to concentration camps and eventually meet the oven.
Serious question: is being selected for this Best Of American Poetry actually worth anything? I mean do these writers really make anything from its sales, or does it allow them to get teaching jobs at better colleges, or something like that?
Or are they arguing about something that will make this guy a couple hundred dollars at best?
Well said. Reminds me somewhat of Jared Taylor’s observation: “I’ll be blunt: everything that you love requires the presence of white people.”
Rhetorical question: why do non-white people keep coming to “a racist and nativist America (and other white countries)?” Why don’t they go to one of the non-white dystopias—oops, I meant utopias—found in Africa, Asia or the Middle East? You know the ones; the countries where literally everyone spends their off-time joining hands and singing Kumbiya and celebrating diversity.
Crazy thought: Why not submit poetry without the name of the author, initially, and judge/select the “art” solely on the basis of merit. Just a thought.
Using Chinese name was a lame idear.
A sure-fire way would have been to call oneself “Fruitisha Jackson”.
Btw, if bruce jenner is a ‘woman’…
Btw, is it ‘racist’ when a minority ‘appropriates’ a minority?
Like the indian guy who pretended to be black.
http://nypost.com/2015/04/12/mindy-kalings-brother-explains-why-he-pretended-to-be-black/
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/new-york-city-production-mikado-draws-criticism-accusations-racism-n429546
Maybe they should ban K-pop and Japanese anime for appropriating and caricaturizing white/western looks and styles.
Is Derb’s poetry CD still available?