Sherman Alexie Speaks Out on The Best American Poetry 2015

        Like most every poet, I have viewed the publication of each year's Best American Poetry with happiness (I love that poem), jealousy (That poet has been chosen for seventy-three years straight.), disdain (Oh, look, another middling poem from one of the greats.) and hope (Maybe they'll choose one of my poems next year.). I am also proud that I've been in Best American Poetry (BAP) five times and even more proud that one of my poems was included in Best of the Best of American Poetry. But let me tell you a secret: I am also conflicted about my appearances in BAP because I don't love four of my five poems that have been chosen. I don't think those four poems are among my best work. In fact, I am rather embarrassed by my first poem to appear in BAP. But there was no way I was ever going to turn down the chance to be in BAP, no matter how I felt about the poems, then or now. I'm quite willing to accept that I might be wrong about the quality of my poems. I understand that I might be immune to their relative strengths and weaknesses. So, yes, like many poets, I am a bubbling mix of arrogance and selfdoubt. And, yes, like many poets, I carefully studied each year's edition of BAP and was highly critical of the aesthetic range (Okay, there had to be more than two great poems published last year written in meter and/or rhyme.), cultural and racial representation (I can't believe there are only 8 poets of color in this edition.), gender equality (What is this? The Golf Club at Augusta?), and nepotism (Did those guest editors really choose, like, sixty-six of their former students?).

        So, yeah, most basically stated, I take the publication of Best American Poetry very fucking seriously.

        And because I take it so seriously and have been so critical in the past, my first instinct was to decline David Lehman's offer to guest edit Best American Poetry 2015. Then approximately one second after I pondered declining, I enthusiastically accepted the job. Of course, I had no idea that I would spend the next six or eight or ten months reading hundreds and hundreds of poems. Hell, it's quite probable that I read over 1,000 poems last year. I might have read over 2,000 poems. It could have been 3,000. Well, let me be honest: I carefully read hundreds of poems that immediately caught my eye while I skimmed hundreds of other poems that didn't quickly call out to me. It's possible that I read more poems last year than any other person on the planet. It was an intensive education in twenty-first century American poetry.

        So what did I learn during this poetry siege? Well, none of us ever needs to write another poem about crocuses, or croci, or however you prefer to pluralize it. Trust me, we poets have exhausted the poetic potential of the crocus. If any of you can surprise me with a new kind of crocus poem then I will mail you one hundred dollars.

        But, wait, I'm not ready to make sweeping pronouncements about the state of American poetry. I must first tell you that I established rules for myself before I even read one poem for potential inclusion in BAP 2015. And what were those rules?

        Rule #1: I will not choose any poem written by a close friend.

        Rule #2: I will be extremely wary of choosing any poem written by somebody I know, even if I have only met that person once twenty years ago and haven't talked to that person since.

        Rule #3: I will also be hyper-judgmental of any poem written by a poet I already admire. I will not be a fan boy.

        Rule #4: I will not choose any poem based on a poet's career. Each poem will stand or fall on its own merits. There will be no Honorary Oscars.

        Rule #5: I will pay close attention to the poets and poems that have been underrepresented in the past. So that means I will carefully look for great poems by women and people of color. And for great poems by younger, less established poets. And for great poems by older poets who haven't been previously lauded. And for great poems that use rhyme, meter, and traditional forms.

        Rule #6: As part of the mission to represent the totality of American poetry, I will read as many Internet poems as I can find, whether published at popular sites or in obscure emagazines that have nine followers.

        Rule #7: I will not ask for the opinion of any other human being when choosing poems. Oh, I know that David Lehman will make many suggestions—and I welcome the help in winnowing the pile of magazines—but I will ignore David's counsel as much as possible.

        Rule #8: Unless David leads me to a great poem that I am compelled to choose, which he will most certainly do a few times.

        Rule #9: I don't want to fill the damn book with poetry professors. I really want to choose some poets who work outside of academia. But I also don't want to bias myself against any poems because they happen to be written by poetry professors, so I will not read any biographies or contributor notes about any poets.

        Rule #10: I don't want to know anything about any of the poets beyond what I already know or what is apparent in the poem itself. So I will not do Internet searches on anybody. I will do my best to treat every poem like it is a blind submission, even if some famous poet has written the poem I'm currently reading.

         Rule #11: I know that these rules will inevitable result in contradictions, conflicts, hypocrisy, and stress rashes.

        So, okay, as a result of these rules, what did I do with Best American Poetry 2015?

        Approximately 60% of the poets are female.

        Approximately 40% of the poets are people of color.

        Approximately 20% of the poems employ strong to moderate formal elements.

        Approximately 15% of the poems were first published on the Internet.

        Approximately 99% of the poets are professors.

        I have never met or had any previous conversations or contact with 56 of the 75 poets.

        There are 30 poets whom I'd never previously read. I didn't know anything about them when I chose their poems.

        I am close friends with only one of the 75 poets.

        Only three of the poets have ever invited me to speak at their colleges. And one of them was on sabbatical when I eventually visited her college.

        In years past, before I was guest editor for BAP, I'd sent fan letters to nine of the poets and, as a result, have maintained semi-regular pen pal relationships with three of them. I have met in person only two of those pen pals and talked to them, separately, for a few minutes at AWP in Denver in 2010.

        Only four of the poets have ever chosen any of my writing for publication. Two of the poets have rejected work of mine for publication.

        I share a publisher, Hanging Loose Press, with three of the poets, though I haven't had contact with one of those guys in 20 years and share maybe one email a year with the other two.

        I work in the Low Residency MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Art with two of the poets.

        I have done public readings with only two of the poets.

        Of the four poets with Seattle roots and connections, I know two of them. I had coffee with one of them eight years ago and briefly met the other last year at a book awards party in Seattle.

        I have only provided publicity blurbs for two of the poets.

        I could easily replace at least thirty of the great poems I chose with thirty other great poem I almost chose.

        I suspect I will eventually regret choosing a few of the poems and omitting others. In fact, right now, I can think of one particular poem that haunts me. I am sick to know that it is absent from BAP 2015. And, no, I will never tell anybody which poems I almost chose.

        So did I pick the best 75 poems published last year? Of course not. I picked 75 poems that survived a literary ordeal that happened only in my brain. I think BAP 2015 contains a handful of incredible poems and dozens of good to great poems.

        I am very proud of what the Best American team and I have accomplished. And I wish I could end this statement with that sentence.

        But, of course, I must now address the controversy that threatens to overshadow every other critical examination of Best American Poetry 2015.

         I chose a strange and funny and rueful poem written by Yi-Fen Chou, which turns out to be a Chinese pseudonym used by a white male poet named Michael Derrick Hudson as a means of subverting what he believes to be a politically correct poetry business.

         I only learned that Yi-Fen Chou was a pseudonym used by a white man after I'd already picked the poem and Hudson promptly wrote to reveal himself.

         Of course, I was angry at the subterfuge and at myself for being fooled by this guy. I silently cursed him and wondered how I would deal with this colonial theft.

        So I went back and reread the poem to figure out exactly how I had been fooled and to consider my potential actions and reactions. And I realized that I hadn't been fooled by anything obvious. I'd been drawn to the poem because of its long list title (check my bibliography and you'll see how much I love long titles) and, yes, because of the poet's Chinese name. Of course, I am no expert on Chinese names so I'd only assumed the name was Chinese. As part of my mission to pay more attention to underrepresented poets and to writers I'd never read, I gave this particular poem a close reading. And I found it to be a compelling work. In rereading the poem, I still found it to be compelling. And most important, it didn't contain any overt or covert Chinese influences or identity. I hadn't been fooled by its "Chinese-ness" because it contained nothing that I recognized as being inherently Chinese or Asian. There could very well be allusions to Chinese culture that I don't see. But there was nothing in Yi-Fen Chou's public biography about actually being Chinese. In fact, by referencing Adam and Eve, Poseidon, the Roman Coliseum, and Jesus, I'd argue that the poem is inherently obsessed with European culture. When I first read it, I'd briefly wondered about the life story of a Chinese American poet who would be compelled to write a poem with such overt and affectionate European classical and Christian imagery, and I marveled at how interesting many of us are in our cross-cultural lives, and then I tossed the poem on the "maybe" pile that eventually became a "yes" pile.

        Do you see what happened?

        I did exactly what that pseudonym-user feared other editors had done to him in the past: I paid more initial attention to his poem because of my perception and misperception of the poet's identity. Bluntly stated, I was more amenable to the poem because I thought the author was Chinese American.

        Here, I could offer you many examples of white nepotism inside the literary community. I could detail entire writing careers that have been one long series of handshakes and hugs among white friends and colleagues. I could list the white poets who have been selected by their white friends for each of the previous editions of Best American Poetry. But that would be just grandstanding. It's also grandstanding for me to accuse white folks of nepotism without offering any real evidence. This whole damn essay is grandstanding.

        So what's the real reason why I'm not naming names? It's because most white writers who benefit from white nepotism are good writers. That feels like a contradiction. But it's not.

        And, hey, guess what? In paying more initial attention to Yi-Fen Chou's poem, I was also practicing a form of nepotism. I am a brown-skinned poet who gave a better chance to another supposed brown-skinned poet because of our brownness.

         So, yes, of course, white poets have helped their white friends and colleagues because of nepotism. And, yes, of course, brown poets have helped their brown friends and colleagues because of nepotism. And, yes, because of nepotism, brown and white poets have crossed racial and cultural lines to help friends and colleagues.

        Nepotism is as common as oxygen.

         But, in putting Yi-Fen Chou in the "maybe" and "yes" piles, I did something amorphous. I helped a total stranger because of racial nepotism.

         I was practicing a form of literary justice that can look like injustice from a different angle. And vice versa.

         And, of course, I know many of you poets are pissed at me. I know many of you are screaming out a simple question: "Sherman, why did you keep that poetry colonist in the anthology even after you learned of his deception?"

        Listen, I was so angry that I stormed and cursed around the room. I felt like punching the wall.

        And, of course, there was no doubt that I would pull that fucking poem because of that deceitful pseudonym.

        But I realized that I would primarily be jettisoning the poem because of my own sense of embarrassment. I would have pulled it because I didn't want to hear people say, "Oh, look at the big Indian writer conned by the white guy." I would have dumped the poem because of my vanity.

         And I would have gotten away with it. I am a powerful literary figure and the pseudonymuser is an unknown guy who has published maybe a dozen poems in his life. If I'd kicked him out of BAP 2015 then he might have tried to go public with that news.

        And he would have been vilified and ignored. And I would have been praised.

        Trust me, I would much rather be getting praised by you poets than receiving the vilification I am getting now.

        But 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.

        And, yes, in keeping the poem, I am quite aware that I am also committing an injustice against poets of color, and against Chinese and Asian poets in particular.

        But I believe I would have committed a larger injustice by dumping the poem. I think I would have cast doubt on every poem I have chosen for BAP. It would have implied that I chose poems based only on identity.

        But that's not what happened. In the end, I chose each poem in the anthology because I love it. And to deny my love for any of them is to deny my love for all of them.

        In choosing what I think is the most diverse set of poems in Best American Poetry's history, I also rejected hundreds of poems written by a vast and diverse world of poets. I rejected a bunch of old white guys. And, hey, I rejected a bunch of old brown people, too. I rejected hundreds of young white poets. And I rejected hundreds of young brown poets, including some of the superstars who are most loudly insulting me. I rejected formalists and free-versers. I rejected dear friends and old enemies. I rejected poems I love and poems I hate.

        I rejected at least one thousand poets in pursuit of the 75 who are in the anthology. It was an exhilarating and exhausting task. And now I am being rewarded and punished. And I am pondering what all of this reveals about my identity—perceived, actual, and imaginary. And I hope that you, as readers and writers, continue to debate The Yi-Fen Chou Problem and my decision to keep the poem in the anthology. But in the midst of all this controversy and wild name-calling, I also hope that you take the time to be celebratory or jealous or disdainful or challenged by the other 74 poets in Best American Poetry 2015.

Comments

[Laura Orem]

Thank you for this.

[leah]

A great response to this! Excited to get the new BAP!

[AAHedgeCoke]

Happens. Thank you for the insight and for your work on the edition.

[Sara Marie Ortiz]

I hope this BAP changes things. I hope this conversation changes things, Sherman.

I truly, truly do, deep down in the deepest depths of my too-privileged, too-cynical, little black, half-white, Indigenous American poet heart. And, yes, yes indeed you are, a "very powerful literary figure." Ultimately, I'm still trying, as a young writer to learn how to hold space for some of these struggles and most complicated conversations to occur instead of rushing to lambast and rage at all I still don't understand, and all the venerated forebears, you relatives, who have nourished and compelled me such in vital ways. Fuck almighty is it hard.

Also standing by my "fuck, Sherman Alexie" of early years though, a not-so-long-ago 'then', because, well, quite frankly it sounds awesome, and I know you actually love it in ways. Plus, I made buttons, and I'd hate for them to go to waste; *insert winky emoticon here*. Vulnerability, too, is power. You're a good egg, Sherman. We love you. I love you.

Swil Kanim, at a recent Seattle gathering of Native luminaries and change-makers, reminded me to say that more. Because, well, it changes things. I believe him. I'll try.

Love, Sara Marie.

[David L. Moore]

Sherman's honesty keeps it clear. The line about "practicing a form of literary justice that can look like injustice from a different angle" is parallel to America's conflicted conversations about affirmative action and "reverse racism." I believe in the former--as justice in the present rebalancing the present imbalances of past injustice--and I don't believe in reverse racism, which is the complaint of us white folk who regret justice "from a different angle." (& note that Affirmative Action is not a loosening of standards--it only adds considerations of identity AFTER finding equal quality in the work itself. . . . & that's exactly what Sherman did.)

[manny d williams]

i have to admit if best american poetry wanted anything from me i would say no. i think it is pretty ideological, but the whole series has been fraught with all kinds of controversies.

mr. alexie there are a lot of very sensitive poets whose croci are sore about this.

[Bill Cohen]

Thank you, Mr. Alexie.

[Surazeus]

Dear Sherman,

Here is my Crocus poem, a segment from my epic tale of the life of Epicurus the philosopher. In this segment he is a young man traveling with his mother Khairestrate who is a healer.

Khairestrate caresses fevered brow
of young woman who shifts in restless sleep.
"Our soul is like sweet Krokos flower that glows
bright purple with light of half-risen sun.
We bury our soul like Krokos bulb deep
in green swelling mound of our mother world,
and there we sleep in sweet refreshing dreams
during dark night of anguish and despair,
so Mother Kthonie dismantles our sorrows
and reassembles our love from rich dreams.
Then with bright rising sun that beams soft rays
over distant hills to wake living creatures
we wake from death and rise from dreaming minds
like tender shoot from buried Krokos bulb
which opens purple petals to receive
warm rays of kissing light that revives well
our animating soul from sleep of death,
and thus we rise again, healed and refreshed.
Like Krokos bulb must be buried to bloom,
we bury souls in sleep so we may thrive."

[Surazeus]

Surazeus = Simon Seamount, WSU 1988

[Adrian]

Dear Mr. Alexie,

Excellent, thank you!

Adrian Koesters

[Mary]

Learning about the guest editor each year is almost as much fun as reading the "Best" selections, and -- as if your poetry hadn't already won my heart -- your transparency is especially endearing.

[Peter]

Excellent response. Very honest. Also, apparently Sherman Alexie somewhat regularly writes fan mail to poets who he's never met.

[Mani Suri]

My friend and poet, Angel Uriel Perales, challenged several of us to write a crocus poem, after reading your observations on judging The Best American Poetry. He read my offering and suggested I send it to you. So here it is for whatever it's worth (Untitled):

Cro-magnon,
Eat crow,
Grow blossoms,
Eat a crocus shitake
Mushroom Clouds
Grow. Crow triumphant
Over Neanderthals.
They walk among us..
Still.

[David]

It's good to know, to see it in writing, that this is really how things are. The name of the book should be changed though to My (insert editor's name here) Favorite Poems of 20XX. That would be more accurate, more honest, and there'd be no controversy.

[Jeff Haas]

Professor poems
Are like like like like like like
Crocuses dying

[brett axel]

It is difficult to put into words how little it matters that Michael Derrick Hudson's poem was included or would have mattered if it had not been. 16 years ago, when the anthology I edited, Will Work For Peace was coming out, I was devastated by the vitriol I got, especially from poets who didn't get in, some of which were very famous, many of which treated it as a personal attack. Many were especially upset that poets they regarded as rivals were included, some of the people that got in were offended that they were included in the same book with someone they hated, one even withdrew his poem rather than be included in the same book with his (just as famous as he was) ex wife. I had no idea how much of a shit storm editing an anthology would be before it came out, and no idea when it did come out how little all those ruffled feathers would mean later in life. I am very glad that the Sherman Alexie is one of the poets in Will Work For Peace, but like every poem in that book, I included it because of the poem, not because of the name on it. Someone in this thread said that Michael Derrick Hudson is a fucking asshole. That may be, but his level of assholedom is not a relevant factor for inclusion. T S Eliot was a fucking asshole and one of the greatest poets who ever lived. The two are not mutually exclusive.

[brett axel]

Oh what a flower the Crocus,
Planted a garden full and it broke us,
they were eaten by a snail,
but a Benny in the mail,
would go quite a long way to stroke us.

[Calbeck]

"And, yes, like many poets, I carefully studied each year's edition of BAP and was highly critical of the aesthetic range (Okay, there had to be more than two great poems published last year written in meter and/or rhyme.), cultural and racial representation (I can't believe there are only 8 poets of color in this edition.), gender equality (What is this? The Golf Club at Augusta?), and nepotism (Did those guest editors really choose, like, sixty-six of their former students?)."

If poetry has turned to racism (judging merit by genes) and sexism (judging merit by gender), it has failed as part of what are commonly known as "The Humanities". One might as well pick up a 1942 German collection, as at the time those were ALSO picked on a similar basis.

Gender and race do not automatically create experience. Experience is a lived thing; no one knows anyone who was burned as a witch at the stake, or married off to a baron for political value. No one alive in the Western world knows what it is like to be a slave, or even to have talked to someone who was one... well, unless you actually read up on the last vestiges of the vile practice, which still continues in organized slavery rings whose primary preferred chattel are --- non-PoCs.

I'd find it VERY interesting if a former non-PoC slave were to write poetry on their experiences and be TURNED DOWN FOR HAVING THE WRONG SET OF GENES.

The crucial racial and gender experiences which made for past poetic value have been rubbed away to a nub over the last two centuries. Because seriously, are you going to write heated prose about the guy on the subway who took up two seats? I've seen someone angrily free-verse about someone crossing the street to avoid them, which hardly approaches Ella Fitzgerald's mournful cry about "the bitter crop" of "the Gallant South".

You are fifty years too late to be treating anyone's racial or gender status as something which imparts any sort of "marginalized voice" with value above and beyond that of any other human being.

[Calbeck]

I should probably clarify: last year, a major hashtag movement for modern feminists was #Manspreading, which complained of men sprawling across two or more seats on the subway.

Yes, this was treated as a big concern, along with fitness ads and the number of video games with female-only protagonists (games which allowed both genders as equal options, despite representing the majority of those games which even have a protagonist of either gender, were largely ignored).

Where is the poetry in this?

[Calbeck]

Racism is the act of judging a person, or what they do, on basis of their race. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Tim Dorsey]

(Oh but I agree with the part where your instinct was to say no to the editorship.) 👴🏻

[louise mensch]

Mr Sherman Alexie's main focus
Was to rid his collection of crocus;
For an author's fake name
He's not really to blame;
His true magic here beats hocus pocus.

[Louise mensch]

Ps

Brilliant blog Mr Alexie. You held the mirror up to nature.

[Laura Orem]

Well-said. So much of the vitriol boils down to "you didn't pick me." This kind of ego-disguised-as-righteous-indignation isn't activism. It's petulance, and it takes time and energy away from making real change in the world.

And just for the record, David Lehman is an extraordinarily good man.

[Laura Orem]

FYI, it was Billie Holiday who sang " Strange Fruit," not Ella Fitzgerald.