Last year, the Poetry Foundation was scorched by its own supporters for not sounding woke enough while Black Lives Matter protests were underway across the United States.
Now, in order to prove its social justice credentials, the foundation’s magazine is publishing an issue full of cons and ex-cons (“current and formerly incarcerated people”), including one guy convicted of possessing more than 500,000 images of child pornography.
When readers were rightfully outraged that Poetry magazine would reserve space in its pages for someone who apparently supports (or supported) child abuse, it replied that editors “didn’t have knowledge of contributors’ backgrounds” and “the editorial principle for this issue was to widen access to publication for writers inside prison and to expand access to poetry, bearing in mind biases against and barriers for incarcerated people.”
Then again, we always have child molesters and abusers to remind us that those biases and barriers exist for a reason.
Tara Betts, one of the issue’s three guest editors, said that she was in the dark about the author’s past and had “no intent to perpetuate further harm.” But then she muddied her apology with a bit of intersectional whataboutism. “I’ve counseled many friends, family members and former students who are survivors, including incarcerated people. I’m heartbroken about hurting anyone or making them revisit their pain. I’m also devastated by policing and prisons and how these are overtly racist and classist systems that protect property over people. What happens when those hurts overlap?”
The magazine reports that it didn’t want to “further judge” the artists highlighted in its issue. Fine, but wouldn’t the tiniest amount of vetting have avoided a public relations disaster and an ethical quandary?
Putting aside the artistic merit of the poem itself (it was fine, but certainly replaceable), you have to ask why Poetry couldn’t have replaced disgraced English professor Kirk Nesset with another literary ex-con — perhaps someone in prison for a property offense, if they’re so down on enforcing such laws. The issue also includes the families of people in prison and prison workers, giving the magazine even more opportunity to find alternative writers.
There is an argument to be made about separating the art from the artist, enjoying books by Roald Dahl (an anti-Semite), movies starring John Wayne (a racist), and so forth. If the work isn’t disdainful — there’s nothing in Nesset’s poem suggesting he might prey on little children — then perhaps we have to accept that art is made by imperfect people.
That argument becomes more difficult to make when artists are profiting from our clicks, streams, and magazine subscriptions. (Not to mention that child abuse is worse than, say, having bigoted opinions or making a few bad jokes.) Poetry’s website says that “all poets will be compensated for published poems. For text poems, we pay $10/line with a minimum honorarium of $300 per poem.” It looks like Nesset was compensated for his work, then.
So the Poetry Foundation’s goal to gather acclaim for its recent issue backfired. Cynically, I’d say that Poetry’s aim to publish poems by people who have spent time in prison is no more than an attempt to appease its ultra-Left audience, the same people who argued that its statement in support of social justice last June was so “watery” that it represented “a violence.” Optimistically, I’d argue that it’s an interesting way to gather a collection of poems we might not have discovered otherwise.
Ultimately, it’s the Poetry Foundation’s hypocrisy that is really stunning. It absolutely groveled when it was accused of not taking racism seriously, almost immediately edging out its president and board chairman and committing $1 million to anti-racist causes. But publishing a sex offender? That’s just a way to “facilitate conversations around contemporary poetry.”
We know that plenty of people are thrown in prison each year for crimes they didn’t commit or for long sentences that they don’t deserve. If any of them can write a good poem, we ought to have a chance to read it. But we really can do without poems by sex offenders. The problem is: That’s the kind of thing you forget to look out for when your ultimate goal is looking woke.
