Best American Poetry 2015 has become, in the words of editor Sherman Alexie, a “damn mess.”

Of the seventy-five poets included in BAP this year, the one at the heart of the mess is Michael Derrick Hudson, who submitted his poem “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve” using the pseudonym Yi-Fen Chou. The poem had been rejected 40 times when Hudson submitted under his own name. It was rejected nine more times when submitted by “Chou,” before being accepted by Prairie Schooner, and later by Alexie for Best American Poetry.

Alexie’s post about the controversy is here.

This opens up a lot of questions and anger that will probably sound familiar to folks who’ve been following debates about the Hugo awards and the SF/F genre in general.

1. Quality vs. Identity. First and foremost is whether this shows people are choosing work based not on quality, but on race and other aspects of identity. Is it really about quotas and checklists, as certain people have argued?

Two of Alexie’s statements are worth highlighting here.

• “I paid more initial attention to his poem because of my perception and misperception of the poet’s identity. Bluntly stated, I was more amenable to the poem because I thought the author was Chinese American.”
• “In the end, I chose each poem in the anthology because I love it.”

The question or quality vs. identity isn’t a mutually exclusive one. This goes back to the false idea that calls for diversity are somehow inherently incompatible with a focus on quality. My reading of what Alexie says in his statement is that Hudson’s pseudonym helped him in the first round of reading, as Alexie was sorting through several thousand poems. But in the end, Alexie made his final decisions based on the quality of the work, selecting 75 poems he loved.

2. Okay, fine, whatever. But would Hudson have gotten in under his own name? This is what a lot of people really want to argue, and I don’t think it’s a question anyone can answer. Hudson’s poem was good enough to be included in BAP. But is there another “good enough” poem that got knocked out of contention because of Hudson’s pseudonym and Alexie’s nepotism?

“…in putting Yi-Fen Chou in the ‘maybe’ and ‘yes’ piles, I did something amorphous. I helped a total stranger because of racial nepotism. I was practicing a form of literary justice that can look like injustice from a different angle. And vice versa.”

Hudson said he deliberately used a Chinese pseudonym to increase his chances of getting published. His poem was rejected 40 times under his name, but only 9 times under “Yi-Fen Chou,” which proves … very little, really. Maybe one of those 40 markets would have accepted the poem under his pseudonym. Maybe that 50th market would have rejected Michael Hudson. But given the way writing and submitting work, we’d need a much larger sample size to reach any conclusions.

We know Alexie paid more attention to and was more amenable to the poem because of that pseudonym. We can’t know whether that was a deciding factor in the poem’s inclusion, though it’s certainly possible.

3. Isn’t Hudson doing the same thing Alice Sheldon did when she wrote as James Tiptree Jr?

Sheldon adopted a male pseudonym in a field with an ongoing, systemic bias against women.

Before I go further, I should note that I’m not an expert on the American poetry market, or on poetry in general. But in order to equate Hudson and Sheldon here, you’d have to demonstrate that an equivalent ongoing, systemic bias against white men exists in the field of poetry. I suspect Hudson believes that, based on his statements. Alexie’s comments suggest otherwise:

“I carefully studied each year’s edition of BAP and was highly critical of the aesthetic range (Okay, there had to be more than two great poems published last year written in meter and/or rhyme.), cultural and racial representation (I can’t believe there are only 8 poets of color in this edition.), gender equality (What is this? The Golf Club at Augusta?), and nepotism (Did those guest editors really choose, like, sixty-six of their former students?).”

I know I’ve seen no evidence of systemic bias against white writers in the SF/F field, and I’m highly skeptical such a bias exists in poetry. What I have seen, and what I suspect may be playing out here, is that people who have historically been given preference, advantages, and privilege, soon come to assume such things are their due. The loss of those institutional advantages is seen not as movement toward fairness and equality, but as unfairly privileging “the other.”

Alexie talks about the rules he set for himself when editing BAP. I think one of those rules is worth closer examination here:

“I will pay close attention to the poets and poems that have been underrepresented in the past. So that means I will carefully look for great poems by women and people of color. And for great poems by younger, less established poets. And for great poems by older poets who haven’t been previously lauded. And for great poems that use rhyme, meter, and traditional forms.”

As editor, Alexie was deliberately paying closer attention to underrepresented poets. This is the opposite of the situation Alice Sheldon found herself in, writing in a field that was (and in many respects, continues to be) overrepresented by men. So no, I don’t think you can justify comparing Mr. Hudson to Alice Sheldon and others like her.

4. Conclusion. I suspect this sort of thing is to some extent inevitable. There are systemic inequities in our society. There’s also an effort to push back against inequity. After generations of imbalance, we come to see imbalance as the norm, and equality is perceived as an attack against those of us in those historically advantaged positions. The loss of privilege is mistaken as discrimination.

Sherman Alexie got taken in by what he describes as “colonial theft.” He also created what he believes to be “the most diverse set of poems in Best American Poetry‘s history.”

I don’t have any easy answers here, but as our genres continue to acknowledge and push back against discrimination and exclusion, I suspect we’re going to see more people like Hudson, and more situations like this one.

I strongly recommend reading Alexie’s entire post.

Today was the first day of school for the kids, and the first day for me being home on my own as a full-time writer dude. I was terribly shocked to discover that things did not go exactly as planned. There were missed buses at both ends of the day, and I ended up going back to bed and sleeping later than I intended. Then at lunch, I started watching Mad Max: Fury Road, and had a little trouble pulling myself away from that.

But I still got butt in chair and made it through close to 10,000 words of revision work on Revisionary.

I’ve also discovered that the 10-hour/week job I’m hoping to pick up probably won’t happen for a few more weeks. On one level, that’s annoying. On another, well, it’s ten more hours of freedom for the next week or two!

I’m really looking forward to getting Revisionary done and turned back in, and getting back to work on Project Bob and several other ideas.

Lessons learned so far:

• I’ll definitely need a bit more discipline when it comes to getting up and moving in the mornings, because otherwise the day is way too short.
• I need to pick my daughter up a little after three, but she usually just goes back to her room, so I could get a little more work done after we get back.
• My son’s bus shows up a little after four, which is probably going to be the end of my work day, unless I want to put in some evening writing.
• It’s way too easy to get caught up in housework and other miscellaneous chores. (On the bright side, our refrigerator is much cleaner and better organized now!) I’m going to try to limit that to one chore/day, at most.
• I was able to mostly stay off Twitter and Facebook. The only real online distraction was a couple of annoying blog comments I chose to respond to. I’ll need to keep an eye on that.

This all still feels weird, like I’m on vacation or something. This isn’t work; it’s what I did on my days off from work!

I definitely think I could get used to it.

Chuck Wendig‘s novel Aftermath [Amazon | B&N | Indiebound] came out on Friday, and while I haven’t read it yet, I’m author enough to admit I’m envious as hell. Chuck got to write the canonical follow-up to Return of the Jedi. How cool is that? The only thing I can think of that might come close is if someone approached me to write the official LEGO Goblin Quest video game.

(Side note: LEGO folks, please hit me up on that!)

To nobody’s surprise, the book is one of the top sellers at Amazon, and has already gathered more than 160 reviews over there.

Funny thing about those reviews, though. Almost half of them are one-star.

What the heck? Did Wendig follow through with his threat to make Jar-Jar and C3PO into Sith lords? Did he introduce sparkling vampire Ewoks? Did he give a character a Swiss Army Lightsaber?

Now, there’s nothing wrong with one-star reviews. Heck, if your book never gets panned, it probably means you’re not reaching a broad enough audience. Not everyone is going to like your work, and that’s okay. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations and all that, if you’ll forgive the genre crossing.

But half of the reviews? I had to know more. So I started reading.

One of the very first one-star reviews has nothing to do with the book. “[P]ublisher when you drop the price to $9.99 where it belongs — you will then earn a FAIR REVIEW for a FAIR PRICE.” While I sympathize and even agree with the reviewer’s complaint here, I wish Amazon had a way to distinguish between reviews complaining about the author’s story and reviews complaining about other things like price, cover, etc.

The third one-star doesn’t hold back:

“This book includes 3 gay characters that feel so forced into the story. Disney is stuffing diversity down our throats and it’s taking me out of my suspension of believe because it feels forced. I myself am a minority but when I read star Wars I don’t want to be thinking about racial consciousness or sexual idenitity. I also don’t like the inclusion of so many gay charcters becuase my personal opinion is that homosexuality is not normal; sodomy is not normal and I am tired of the liberal media trying to make me accept this lifestyle.” (Source)

Oh, dear. A galaxy that includes countless species and droids and races acknowledged the existence of homosexuality? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Can we PLEASE get back to giant slugs with a fetish for other species, green muppets, blue elephant people, and giant walking carpets? You know, characters who are normal.

Well, maybe this ignorant bigot is an exception. Let’s look at some of the other one-star reviews.

• “It’s a propaganda piece by a SJW progressive intent on sending a message about his brand of politics.“
• “And you want to put in alternative life styles? Fine. But it doesn’t have to be spelled out every time.“
• “No really, I’m not being hateful or bigoted, Chuck and Disney decided at some point to make half of Star Wars gay.“

All righty then. So some people are pissed off about Wendig getting teh gay in their Star Wars. Got it.

Other reviews complain about the writing style. Aftermath is written in first person and present tense. Nerdist.com had the following to say about the prose:

“If you’re a fan of Wendig’s writing style, you’ll be happy to know it’s present here. His narration style for this novel is different and won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I like the urgency of it. The tone is snappy but not short, if that makes sense. Each sentence, each description of action, each joke — it all hits you right between the eyes in the exciting head rush sort of way. No space is wasted, and we dive deep inside the inner workings of our lead characters.”

Fair enough.

There’s a third batch of complaints from people who are angry at Disney and angry that the expanded universe Star Wars novels are officially not canon, and are not being continued. Author Michael Patrick Hicks pointed to the Star Wars Books Facebook Page, which is full of comments like:

• “After spending a few thousand $$$$ over the last 22 years on star wars books based on a time line that Disney threw in the trash a few freebies are deserved for any respectable star wars fan to buy into the new timeline….“
• “How to purchase Star Wars: Aftermath:
  Step 1) Pick it up on the shelf
  Step 2) Look at it and sigh in a disappointed manner.
  Step 3) Quickly put it down and pick up a copy of Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura and purchase that instead.”
• “Nah. I have Zahn’s books. Not gonna get this one.“

Looking back at the Amazon reviews, you see a lot of people mourning for Timothy Zahn and the expanded universe. One reviewer sums it up thusly: “Disney already kind of did their slap with tossing the EU that kept the franchise going all these decades.”

So from everything I’m seeing, Aftermath‘s barrage of one-star reviews are primarily coming from three camps:

1. OMG you got gay cooties all over my Star Wars and now everyone’s gonna have PINK LIGHTSABERS and Boba Fett’s gonna be flying around in rainbow-colored armor!!!!!1!11!
2. Timothy Zahn and his Expanded Universe descendants are the True Gods of a Galaxy Far, Far Away. DEATH TO THE USURPER!
3. Dude, first person? Present tense? How can you write about a long time ago in present tense?

I have no sympathy for group #1. Group #2 … that’s frustrating. I get that you’ve invested a lot in those stories, and that’s awesome. It really is. I would have loved to see Thrawn and Mara Jade show up in Star Wars VII. But the decision to go in another direction isn’t a Death Star blast to your childhood or anything like that.

For group #3, if you bounced that hard off of Wendig’s style, then yeah, that sucks. Wendig knew he was taking a risk there, and sometimes risks fail. Some readers seem to really love the way he wrote it. Others hate it. Fair enough.

Did I say I was envious of Wendig? The widespread publicity and success of this book has put him in some ugly crossfire, a good chunk of which has very little to do with his writing. Every published book comes with the potential for negativity, but Aftermath brings it to a whole new level. In all honesty, it’s a little frightening to watch.

But none of it changes my thoughts about wanting to write a Star Wars novel of my own. I might rethink my plan to do it in second-person future tense, though…

So far, this full-time writer thing has been … weird.

Several people warned me that it would take a while to catch up on sleep, and they weren’t wrong. I’ve been sleeping in a bit and feeling surprisingly tired in the evenings. I’ve even crashed for the occasional nap.

I’ve gotten a bit of writing done, roughly at the same pace I’d been doing before. (I’m up to 11K words on Project Bob.) I’ve also started chipping away at various chores and errands and home maintenance things. Part of my brain is grumbling that I haven’t made more progress on the new book, but I’m trying to cut myself some slack this first week. This is a recovery and transition time.

It’s also the last week before the kids go back to school. Starting next week, I’ll be alone from the time I wake up until mid-afternoon when I head out to pick up my daughter. I suspect that will make a big difference when it comes to being able to focus on writing, or whatever else I need to work on.

Without the structure of the day job, I’m working on putting together my own schedule. I’m hoping my days will look something like this:

• 8 a.m. – Wake up. Grab breakfast.
• 8:30 – 10:30 – 10 hour/week freelance opportunity. (I’m still waiting to see if this works out, but if it does, it would be a nice, small, steady paycheck to supplement the other writing income.)
• 10:30 – Noon – Writing! (Or grocery shopping and other errands, when needed.)
• Noon – 1:00 – Lunch.
• 1:00 – 3:00 – Writing!
• 3:00 – 3:30 – Pick up my daughter.
• 3:30 – 4:30 – Writing!

There could be evening writing work as needed, and weekends as well, but if this works out, it means I’m getting 3-4 hours of writing time every day before stopping to make dinner.

I’m also planning to start exercising again in the evenings. I started with 20 minutes on the exercise bike last night. If I can get back into the habit, it will help the depression, the diabetes, and just get me back into better shape overall.

Other things I need to figure out:

• Making time for socializing and getting out of the house.
• Making sure the housework and such doesn’t devour all of my writing time.
• How much to try to work in the evenings and weekends. (I know I want and need more time to relax with my family than I’d been getting before.)

It all feels a bit surreal right now, and it will be another week before I start to have anything approaching “normal” full-time writer days.

But I already feel more rested and less stressed than I did a week ago. So far, so good!

My first Monday as a full-time writer!

The Hugos and Worldcon are over, and thus did the internet see the Eighth Plague of Post-Hugo Pontification. Some declared victory, while others declared victory for totally different reasons, and lo did they yelleth at one another over whose “victory” was bigger.

But on the fifth day, a lull did fall upon the web of the wide world, as rational and informed people of all nations looked down in agreement and unity. For generations of canine tribal war paled in the face of one simple truth:

This was dumbassery most epic. Most epic indeed…

ETA: Good gravy, there’s more, and this one wants to bring in the FBI!

I invite fans on all sides to finally come together as one to ask, “Dude, seriously?”

Because wow…