Alaska poet Joan Naviyuk Kane has been included in the 2015 edition of the "The Best American Poetry" anthology.
She will take part in the Launch Reading of the book at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 24, at The New School in New York City. She'll also travel to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Sept. 26 to conduct a reading and workshop at Woodland Pattern Bookcenter.
"Best American Poetry" is an esteemed annual collection of critically acclaimed poems by Americans. This year's edition has drawn more attention than usual because one of the poems, "The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve," by Michael Derrick Hudson, was submitted and accepted under the pseudonym of Yi-Fen Chou.
Pseudonyms are common enough. Few people know the real names of Pele, Mata Hari, Man Ray, Anne Rice or Pablo Neruda. In America, immigrants and their children often tweak their pen names in ways that, intentionally or not, obscure their ethnicity. Woody Allen and Stan Lee come to mind.
But a white man using a Chinese woman's name was considered beyond the pale by some, a sneaky way to get a leg up on the competition. Hudson conceded as much, saying, "After a poem of mine has been rejected a multitude of times under my real name, I put Yi-Fen's name on it and send it out again." It's been successful, he added. "The Bees" was rejected 40 times under his real name but only nine times as attributed to Yi-Fen before it was picked up by the Prairie Schooner literary magazine.
Sherman Alexie, the editor of the edition, said he was furious when he found out the true identity of the poem's author. But then he wondered if perhaps his choice had been influenced by the presumed ethnicity of the poet. He went back and read it again and determined that it really did merit placement, even if it was written by Bruce Wayne.
Kane, by the way, is all-Alaskan, the daughter of a white father and Inupiaq mother. Her writing is world-class, which is why Alexie selected her poem "Exhibits from the Dark Museum" for inclusion in the anthology.