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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3121 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: When White Poets Pretend to be Asian

what it says is that Sherman Alexie expected - and accepted- lower-quality work from an author he perceived to be a minority.





_refugee_  ·  3121 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Aka, the name mattered more than the poem. Which is my point.

kleinbl00  ·  3121 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The question is which matters more: the poem or the ecosystem in which the poem exists?

In my opinion, there are lots of bad poems that are revered as masterpieces. However, I'm just a guy that doesn't particularly like poetry and my opinion is thoroughly irrelevant. This discussion centers on the fact that some poems are only "the best American poems" if they're considered to be something they're not. It erodes the authority of the art because it reveals that the opinion of the people who should matter may not be relevant, either. in the end, what is "good?"