from totems to hiphop

So I’ve just finished reading & watching all of the assigned work for this week & I’m surprised to find that what I go back to again & again are Reed’s own words in the Introduction (& the section introductions throughout the book). I’m fascinated by this invocation of “the canon,” and how it is that we, as writers (or academics or interested humans or whatever), play a role in establishing, encouraging & perpetuating this singular classification of literature that obviously isn’t very representative.

I looked up canon in a big fat dictionary & of the relevant definitions, this is what we’ve got:

1. a law or rule
2. a doctrine, discipline or code
3. a grouping determined by authority that may change over time
4. a collection of books determined to be genuine & representative of their classification
   

All of this & none of this makes sense. All of this is offensive when you throw the word “genuine” around. If the canon is supposedly flexible to change over time, how has it come to seem so stagnant? Or am I showing my poorly-read belly here? Has it changed? From where I’m at, it seems like they’ve merely subbed in old white names for other old white names. And by they, I guess I mean academia. Does academia decide who’s in the canon? It doesn’t really seem like anybody else cares.

Still, Reed talks about the cycling through of what is “in” & what is “out,” saying “The outsiders challenge the academy, only to become the new academy and to be challenged by a new group of outsiders,” (xxix). If we are subbing the outsiders into the academy, why isn’t the canon changing? Is this what he’s talking about when he refers to his Mexican-American student at Berkeley? That we are all trained to be white; to like white, want white, write white?

The canon – or let’s be honest, plain ol publication – gives authority to the works it includes. The poets not included in the canon/publication, though, aren’t just ignored – there is a sense of “otherness” that’s attached to everything not included; a sense of lacking, taboo, less-than. I love when Reed writes “An intellectual who is chosen by the segregated media as someone ‘widely regarded as the leading African-American intellectual’ would probably place fiftieth on a list actually composed by African-American intellectuals,” (xvi). It’s such a contradiction to America’s obsession with not only authenticity, but also with digging up & breaking down folks who aren’t “authentic” enough. I watch this happen in the slam community weekly, where popularity, reputation & crowd persuasion can send the worst poet on stage to the finals. Anybody can win a poetry slam; they apply the same rules there, it would seem, as they do with determining the entire country’s literary representation. Totally arbitrary!

Reed goes on to talk about the publishing game & I’m nodding my head here, too. Having worked in corporate publishing for a number of years, it would break your brain to know exactly how little continuity of process goes into choosing which book to publish. The acquisitions editor is having a good day at the office & bam, a random poet gets their big break. Somebody pisses off the editor & it’s back to previously-published white, male poets with contracts or – worse? – nobody gets published at all. It’s shocking, this comparison Reed draws between academics and scientists & how they (scientists) would never be satisfied by accepted theories. Are we really that brain washed?

I’m also curious about how this is affecting the poetry we’re writing. I know Reed mentions that we are told we shouldn’t draw on the full range of emotions, but I wonder also if we are watching each other write for publication (or the canon) & we don’t say anything. Or worse, we don’t see anything wrong with it. A poet’s got to make a living, right? Publishing isn’t necessarily a way to feed yourself, but it can help you get jobs that support your craft. Even now as many of us MFA students are meeting with our thesis advisors, the question of publication is on the table. What is at stake if we are all gearing our intentions toward appealing to the (white) acquisitions editor’s volatile interests? Do friends let friends write for the canon?


p.s. I’m so glad somebody finally called Dave Eggers out.
xo meg