Since Major Jackson published his landmark essay “A Mystifying Silence: Big and Black,” like many other white poets I have been considering the question, posed therein, of why so few white poets are visibly tackling the subject of race. Jackson himself wonders “how much self-censorship or ambivalence is at work among white poets” and goes on to suggest that “contemporary fiction writers…are more willing to take risks.” In other words, white poets perhaps prefer not to engage with this subject because, ever since the advent of confessional poetry, readers typically assume that the first person speaker of a poem is the poet, an assumption that is far less readily made in fiction. Hence, because the topic of race is so ultra-sensitive, white poets justifiably fear any words they write on the subject may be held against them. No doubt there is some truth in this view.
But what if this isn’t entirely the case? What if a large part of the answer is actually far simpler and can readily be expressed in the terms of the market forces so beloved of our capitalist society? (Yes, we know there’s no money in poetry, but Po-Biz has already amply demonstrated that money is superfluous to the control of its supply/demand curve.) Maybe white poets don’t write about race because it is incredibly difficult for a white poet to get a poem about race published (unless he or she happens to be called Tony Hoagland.)
Unpacking this, let’s begin with the postulation that most literary journals are liberal. There are of course exceptions to this rule, including, alas, several New Formalist journals. Digressing for the sake of example, I have the last copy of the now defunct Iambs & Trochees in my possession. Examining names and bios I’d hazard a guess that none of the fifty contributors is African American. The issue also includes a poem about race that illustrates Mr. Jackson’s point elegantly. If you were a liberal white editor, would you wish to have your name associated with the following lines from the sonnet “Affirmative Action in Action” by Malcolm Paige?
We’re afraid we’ll have to go
With young Ms. Ti-Abeba Grant…
Of course, Ms. Grant will be on track
For quick promotion in no time…
Sho’ ‘nuff, massa—I’ll get back
Behind the modern color-line.
Distasteful or not, this poem does engage with race and some of the very real fears that affirmative action generates among white people, a topic also bravely addressed by Barack Obama in his recent speech.
I doubt it would have found a home in any of the large number of literary journals associated with the creative writing departments of universities, of which I think it’s safe to say the majority are liberal. Most of these would not dream of permitting a poem expressing a first person politically incorrect sentiment to appear between their pages. (Would Frank Bidart’s “Herbert White” get published today, I wonder?)
In vain I trawled my not insubstantial collection of literary journals—contributors copies, samples and back numbers of Agni, Rattle, 32 Poems, Field, the Literary Review—looking for ANY poem on the subject of black/white race relations by ANY poet, black or white, and found nothing. Poems about Vietnam? Check. Poems about being Jewish, and the Holocaust? Check. (So it’s not as though we Caucasians aren’t engaging with our shameful history.)
But hang on a moment. Where were the poems about race by African Americans? Indeed, where were the poems by African Americans? I know some do make it into issues of these journals that I don’t possess, because I have seen them. And I am fairly certain that this isn’t a question of editorial prejudice—submissions by African American poets being excluded on the basis of race—because I am equally certain that these particular journals would fall over themselves to publish a good poem by an African American, underlining their liberal commitment to diversity. But my brief survey suggests that these are few and far between. So where are these poems about race, and/or by African Americans, appearing?
With apologies to my good friend Major Jackson (who understands that I do all this out of a commitment to understanding and truth) here are some highlights from the acknowledgements page of his first excellent book Leaving Saturn: Xavier Review, Obsidian II, Callaloo, Painted Bride Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, American Poetry Review, New Yorker.
O white reader, of those first three journals, you have probably only heard of Callaloo, which is the foremost literary journal of the African Diaspora. Xavier Review and Obsidian II are two other journals whose primary focus is the literature of the Diaspora. That leaves just a couple of opportunities (PBQ, Crab Orchard) for a young white poet to appear alongside Mr. Jackson’s early work before he made it into the big time—most of us only dream of being in the New Yorker or APR.
Five of the poems from Tracy K. Smith’s award winning first collection Duende also appeared first in Callaloo. In other words, if I can draw a conclusion from this admittedly small sample, it would be that fledgling African American poets tend to publish many of their poems about race in journals which are self-segregating. How can white poets have a poetic dialogue about race with African American poets, when the latter’s poems are appearing in journals white poets can’t get into and, (some would say, therefore,) don’t read? More importantly, how can we expect the white editor of a liberal literary journal to publish a poem on race by a white poet if he doesn’t have a balancing poem on race by an African American poet to put alongside it? Wouldn’t even Malcolm Paige’s poem look more forgivable if it was located next to a feisty piece by Erica Dawson, winner of the 2006 Hecht Prize, about being a young, black, female formalist?
Don’t get me wrong—I’m all for journals with specific constituencies. Callaloo has every much right to exist as Literary Mama, Measure and Pan-American Haiku. But the existence of Callaloo as a preferred market for poetry of the Diaspora by African Americans perversely makes it harder for white poets to get their poetry about race published anywhere (except, perhaps, right wing journals like Iambs & Trochees. But most of our race poems are more tolerant than Malcolm Paige’s; many are sympathetic, despairing, even.)
What about Tony Hoagland, I hear you say? His controversial poems “The Change,” about the Williams sisters, and “Rap Music,” were published by Agni and Lyric respectively. This is according to the acknowledgements page of What Narcissism Means to Me, from which I also learn that no fewer than thirteen of the book’s poems were published by American Poetry Review. Hoagland is an ‘A’ list poet, and has been for a while. He’s up there with Billy Collins, Sharon Olds, Louise Gluck et al. On Jeffrey Bahr’s Print Journal Ranking Difficulty Scale, APR rates an 8, putting it in the top five most exclusive literary journals, where AGNI gets a 5 (the same rating, incidently, as Callaloo) and Lyric a mere 3. It makes good marketing sense for those second tier journals to publish Hoagland, regardless of the subject matter of his poems. (But why didn’t those poems end up in APR?)
Over-simplifying, admittedly, one observable difference between black and white poets could be that the former begin by publishing poems about race in second tier segregated journals, and move on to publishing slightly less charged material in the top end mainstream literary journals, whereas white poets can only get poems about race published in the second tier mainstream literary journals once they have established their credentials at the top end—a progression in a different direction.
What’s to be done? Well, young African-American poets need to submit poems about race to second tier non-segregated mainstream literary journals. In return, those journals need to have a braver policy about accepting poems on a racial theme, regardless of the ethnic origin of the author. One of the journals could even do a special issue with race as a theme, encouraging submissions from poets of all colors.
And Callaloo? Why couldn’t they call for some poetry on the theme of the African Diaspora written by white poets? I have some languishing in a drawer that I would be delighted to send them.
