White Male Poets Not Wanted
October 20, 2015
A POET from Indiana offers compelling proof of discrimination by publishers against white male literary artists. From The Federalist:
The literary journal Prairie Schooner published “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve” by Yi-Fen Chou in its Fall 2014 issue, and the poem was referred to the Best American Poetry 2015 anthology, which accepted it and published it this fall. Then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire, because “Yi-Fen Chou” was actually a cynically chosen pen name for Michael Derrick Hudson, a white male poet from Indiana.
After his acceptance, Hudson confessed his white male identity to anthology editor Sherman Alexie, who decided to include the poem anyway.
Poetry is a subjective business. But Hudson’s revelation that “The Bees….” was rejected 40 times under his real name is revealing: “If this indeed is one of the best American poems of 2015, it took quite a bit of effort to get it into print, but I’m nothing if not persistent….”
Kidist Paulos Asrat found the same phenomenon at work a few months ago when she tried to organize a program on Western Civilization at the public library in multicultural Mississauga, Ontario.
