Comments on: ASK

By: NKM

NKM — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:35:45 +0000

Wanda,
I want to apologize for the rude and predictable deflections threaded beneath your post. That said, I can certainly relate to the content of your post.
As a poet beyond the pale, I’ve had my share of annoying assumptions. I’ve been told my poetry reminds “them” of Agha Shaheed Ali despite my never having read the man at the time.
A friend said she thought of me as “a gay Indian poet.” When I countered that meant I ought to think of her as a ’straight American botanist” she paused and floundered with, “That would only make sense if we were in India.”
Being pigeonholed is frustrating–and yet it provides the impetus to write verse relevant to it. But I wonder, when one is marginalized by one’s cultural nexus as a poet, how often can you really be perceived as writing outside your margin unless you change your name to Mike McGillicuddy and never allow your readers to see a picture of you. Rhetorical.

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:12:07 +0000

Perhaps a stretch, but of possible related interest (excrement is mentioned), one of the liveliest and most fraught debates ever conducted around the subject of Flarf is now ongoing at Dale Smith’s Possum Ego. http://www.possumego.blogspot.com/
Highly recommended. Most of it is down a few posts, with nearly 50 comments so far.
Kent

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:33:49 +0000

Michael,
the point is, you’re not her editor. If you want to be her editor, take it backchannel. Professional editing is done behind the scenes, which is as it should be. You could have made a friendly editing suggestion that way. But you chose to deflect the point of her post & to focus on nitpicking quibbles – close to insulting. Why? Just to get a rise? Turn up the heat instead of the light?

By: Michael Martin

Michael Martin — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 10:22:56 +0000

Okay, let’s move from grammatical issues to the topic of the prose written (see, it probably should be written prose, but hey)….
I’m a poet and I enjoy wearing baggy jeans. I have a large behind (thanks Dad!), large thighs, and I am generally a large bodied person. (I weigh 200 pounds, am 6′3, but I am built like a football player, dad played for the Saints, its inherited). I like to wear earrings in my ears. Some rings, sometimes, and maybe a necklace. I am dark skinned. Dark chocolate brotha, you could say (and I am sometimes called such).
My baggy jeans do not hang off my ass constantly, though sometimes they hang slightly below my waist because of my long legs. It is difficult to find the perfect fit because the normal dimensions of 32×34 dont work. And it feels comfortable not to have a pair of jeans riding about my waist. My clothes are generally not form fitting. They have room. I like room. I am claustophobic, and I just plain ol enjoy the style, too.
When I go to poetry readings, people expect me to do spoken word pieces, or be an “angry black man”. When my poetry is more inbetween the oral tradition and poetry written for the page.
The presumptions once I begin reading can be seen on their faces. They’re surprised. Sometimes pleasantly, other-times, not so much. I can hang with the homeboys, but also go to the academic circles and hang there too.
One guy in the audience at a reading of mine made the comment that the poet reading after me was “A real poet”, because he was staying true to his ethnicity. I did not have the heart to tell him of the legendary libraries of Timbuktu… the scholars living there the whole known world would visit. I didn’t have the time to point out the reflections of daily African-American life in my poems…I didn’t have the heart to tell him I grew up not only in the south, but was born there, and also lived nearly everywhere else, grew up around many ethnic types, and how my family and I are very in touch with our roots.
See, people will expect things of you, and project these ideals onto you. And then become pretty “miffed” when you don’t fit the mold of their assumptions. Crazy, no?
I as an African-Americans (as people in general, but in America this focus is different), I am entitled not only to be asked questions such as, “Why do you write about things that don’t have to do with black life in America, or racial issues?”
I am entitled to be asked these questions as I am entitled to respond, “I do.” You can see it in small inflections and large strokes. One cannot focus-down a poets entire poetic life to a small group of poems heard/read. It is a small window. A part of an ongoing dialogue just as that question after the poem adds to the dialogue. It gives us the chance to respond, open a symposium, clear up any misconceptions. because, as Yusef Komunyakaa said in his recent mtvU interview, we should “Be inquisitive. And not just for the sake of information, but just because … it keeps us connected to who we are.”
He was answering a question directed to newcomers to poetry, but it can be applied to all communicative humanity.
Connected to who WE are. Ms Coleman writes, “My concern is for the long-term, for the coming tsunami of political assumptions (they will be anything BUT post-racial),” for good reason.
People aren’t wondering where they are getting their information. They’re not thinking about when they compare a black leather jacket to an African-American’s skin, one is truly black and the other is brown. And when they juxtapose a white-T to Caucasian skin, one is not white.
We are all shades of brown. Some lighter, some darker. Once we begin to realize this, the trouble of assumptions will start to fade…hopefully.
(Maybe I’ve gone on too long…)

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 07:38:06 +0000

Michael,
You are harsh and have no place in the Obama Dispensation. Be gone!

By: Tod Strait

Tod Strait — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 06:47:40 +0000

Wasn’t the president raised by white-folks in Hawaii? I don’t know what assumptions are being made but I don’t watch the news much. And, I will say that I was in a room full of white people and Indians (not Native-Americans) and they were remarking about how the “neighborhood ball” made them feel a bit alienated.
Wanda, do you ask them? I assume that you probably don’t assume and that you do ask others.
The problem is, unfortunately, it might not be the answer you want to hear. Dreadlocks have been around in India for millenia, yet when anyone who isn’t black has them they are immediately “trying to be black” or are a false rasta (or whatever). Racism goes both ways and it isn’t just white and black. If you have never made an assumption without asking than you must be superhuman. I mean, you can’t go around in dashikis lookin like “Nat X” in the middle of redneck palestine without catching a little slack from the locals ya know? it’s propriety and common sense.
And if you think President Barry’s got it so bad, think about Clinton having to talk about all his, ahem, business in front of all those suits! ew!

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 04:01:32 +0000

Henry, it’s obvious that I was objecting to the misplaced modifier, not wondering what was doing the inferring (the implying). I don’t think it’s too much to ask that people who are paid to write actually pay attention to their prose.

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 03:37:45 +0000

p.s. you’re wondering what I said to so annoy the Hell’s Angels, right?
They were having an East/West Coast reunion there, outside the Dead concert. There must have been 3 dozen of them, all spangled & leathery & tattooed & jangling. I referred to them as “Rotarians” . . . now that’s just asking for trouble. The assumptions we make about people!

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 01:21:13 +0000

OK, I did own a pistol, once. I even took it on a plane (again, this was a few decades back). But I never threatened ANYBODY with it. I never took it out of the box. In fact, I threw it off the Red Bridge into the Providence River, where it remains to this day.
Peace & Gossip.

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 01:16:33 +0000

Michael, “body language” is the subject of “inferred”. Get it? It’s OK, grammatically.
Also, someone can “confront” someone – imaginatively, psychologically – just as well behind their back as to their face.
Lighten up, Whitey. What, you applying for an editor stint at Poetry Magazine?
*
p.s. I have NEVER, in my life, as far as I can recall, threatened ANYONE physically – directly or indirectly – with gun or without. I did have a couple of imaginary barfights with Jim Behrle, I admit. Back in the mid-70s, I verbally needled a group of Hells’ Angels, outside a Dead concert in San Francisco. For this, i got slapped to the ground by a fat giant member of the NYC fraternity, & had my guitar stolen. But, being considerate & empathetic & cordial, they got me into the concert free, through the stage door. I met Jerry Garcia there – & he was very friendly, but he couldn’t help me get my axe back.
There may have been other occasions… I just can’t remember. Peace.