On the Harper’s Letter

This piece only touches on a fraction of issues with the letter. Faylita Hicks addresses these and other areas of concern on their Twitter @FaylitaHicks

I was at once unsurprised and very surprised when reading the recent open letter regarding “cancel culture” and “free speech” in Harper’s. The biggest surprise for me came not from the content, which was predictable in its conflation of consequences with censorship, of public opinion with the state. It came from seeing some of the signatures. One of my favorite professors had signed. As a writer and educator, he always pushed us to be precise and immediate in our poetry. So why did he sign such an imprecise and poorly crafted letter, so clearly written to elicit a false sense of consensus between writers with drastically different ethics and politics? According to him, it was to encourage discussion and value of dissent in literature. A recurrent idea in the letter was that upheaval in mastheads and public backlash against poems and pieces of writing deemed violent inhibits risk-taking. I want to challenge this, on two fronts.

1. In his book, The Art of Daring, Carl Phillips talks a lot about risk in the writing process; that there must be something to be lost in the writing in order for there to be something to be gained. I would argue that in a world where so many people in various identities of privilege — namely whiteness and cis-ness — play “devil’s advocate” in conversations around the humanity of others, without any true risk to their personhood, social or professional consequence is a valuable tool: rather than quash risk, it forces us as writers to ask, is this risk worth taking? Do I truly value and believe in the work I am doing, would I stand behind it in the face of opposition?Rather than making risk an impossibility, the current push for public accountability gives risk a new meaning for privileged writers used to engaging in risk without consequence, a falsehood.
2. There is always another risk to be taken. That is the joy of writing; there are infinite boundaries to transgress, formal, narrative, and on and on. If the only “innovative” aspect of your writing is its (mis)use of marginalized people, then that is a lazy piece of writing.

One examination I think this letter can encourage the literary/publishing community to undertake is how our institutions, our publication platforms, can be more than channels to power and influence, but true editorial spaces. I’m thinking specifically of the poem by Anders Carlson-Wee published in The Nation back in 2018. The poem, “How To,” relies on flattened tropes of Black, homeless and disabled identities to cover for a lack of meaningful craft (image, metaphor, etc..). When the poem came out, people were justifiably angry at Carlson-Wee, somewhat to the exclusion of investigating The Nation’s editorial process.

I’ve been a poetry editor at a volunteer-run literary journal. I’ve seen work that was appropriative and offensive. We promptly rejected these poems via a form letter that did not address the ethical concerns we had with the work. I know how much time it can take to even get decisions made, let alone explained in feedback to a writer, but I think this kind of feedback is necessary. We need to normalize telling submitting writers when their work crosses a line; we need to normalize hearing that as writers.

In a world where literary/publishing businesses are largely run by white people, the responsibility to engage in these discussions is double — both professional in the duties of editors, and ethical, in the duties of people striving to do anti-racist work. Don Share, formerly of Poetry Magazine, didn’t just make a “clumsy mistake.” He made several choices to not examine a poem’s reliance on anti-black racism. He chose to treat the magazine as a channel to influence rather than a location of artistic and ethical dialogue. So yes, he lost his job. This is not the same as censorship. Public accountability is not the same as state violations of free speech.

While “cancel culture” has some very real carceral impulses that need to be challenged, equating social and professional consequences with state violence is a false tactic commonly used by rape apologists and racists. Carlson-Wee was not jailed for his speech. Don Share was not disappeared for his editorial choices. They are free to continue speaking, but they are not entitled to a paid platform. They are not entitled to an audience. None of us are.