Nikki Wallschlaeger, _Crawlspace, pt. 2; Anders Carlson-Wee; Sam Sax

I PURCHASED CRAWLSPACE because I liked a poem by Wallschlaeger that was published in The Nation--"It's a Daisy." "It's a Daisy" (not in this volume) and quite a few of the poems in Crawlspace draw on Wallschlaeger's experiences and perspective as an African-American woman; since I was reading the book at the same time as the furor over another poem published in The Nation, Anders Carlson-Wee's "How-To," I kept thinking about whether writers' identities set boundaries to who or what they can write about.

Carlson-Wee's poem draws on the experiences of the homeless and the vernacular of African-Americans, but he is neither African-American nor, apparently, homeless. Hence, in the view of many (some of whose letters appeared in the September 10/17 issue of The Nation), his poem is an appropriation, a claiming of what is not his to claim.

The magazine's poetry editors, Stephanie Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith, saw the point of the objections and apologized for publishing the poem. In a new statement in the same issue as the objecting letters, they stand by the apology.

That surprised me--I expected them to be a bit more staunch. I'm from an older generation, though--Grace Schulman's and Katha Pollitt's responses to the apology sounded right to me. But even Anders-Wee himself has apologized on Twitter: "I am sorry for the pain I have caused, and I take responsibility for that." If the poet himself is saying "My bad," I'm not sure where the grounds are for making the case for artistic liberty.

But--to return to Wallschlaeger--should I ascertain that she actually is an African-American woman before I endorse her poems? I mean, I'm reasonably sure she is. But if it turns out she isn't, does that de-legitimate the poems?

I just started reading Bury It by Sam Sax, whom I also first read in The Nation. A lot of the poems invoke a risk-embracing youth--drugs, unprotected sex with strangers. Do we need to know that Sax really did take drugs and have unprotected sex with strangers in order to find the poems worth our attention?

I don't actually feel like defending Carlson-Wee's poem all that much--I didn't think it was terrible, but I also did not feel inspired to search out his book(s). But the idea that poets and writers may only write from perspectives they have some sort of real-world claim to inhabiting--that no white woman should imagine herself into the perspective of Crazy Horse, no Irish poet write as a Holocaust survivor, no African-American take on the voice of Lao-Tse--is that sustainable? Wouldn't we be losing something valuable?