Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 05:46:32 -0700
From: dean brink <interpoetics-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: ibm world?/Yasusada


I think these topics of Yasusada and the IBM joke both relate to a racist,
neo/post/colonial thread in American (AngloAmerican?) literary culture. 

I was involved in on-and-off discussions in the fallout of Perloff's
article on Ken Johnson's fictitious Hiroshima-survivor
made-to-sell/heart-plucking poetry under the imaginary Yasusada authorship.
Ken Johnson admits his deception, but denies it is more than a literary
exercise/hoax of a postmodern sort. Being a Japanese poetry specialist, I
found nothing redeeming in his unsophisticated poetry, obvious designed to
play on stereotypes of Japanese, Japanese poetry, Japanese history. He
writes for an American bourgeoisie that seems to enjoy numbingly
meaningless melodies. It is only interesting as a case study of the degree
to which many American intellectuals and academics play the "liberal,"
"multicultural," "who me, I'm not a racist" card, while cultivating a
blindness to understanding non-Eurocentric cultures (I should mention in
passing that Japanese society itself is so thoroughly racist that it really
calls for redefinition of colonialism as a non-pigmented vs. pigmented
people distinction. What makes this a real problem is their increasingly
idiosyncratic view of history, which alienates other Asian nationals and
could lead to serious conflicts in the future.)

Neither Ken Johnson nor many others on the Poetic list (including many
prominent experimental/Language poets) could see how the Yasusada hoax was
offensive. I don't know if the List is still active, but the archives for
those discussions are at: http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/poetics/  

The discussion gets tangled up in tangential issues of an American Buddhist
poetry anthology that excludes Asian Americans (!) because they aren't up
to snuff (the editor implied !).--The ignorance, classism, and plain dumb
(historically removed attempt to maintain the status quo to serve one's own
interests) arrogance pervading American poetry circles is amazing - though
it has been addressed recently in a NY Times article on a coup to oust
white male ascendancy in the Am. Academy of Poets or some such organization
that I've already learned to ignore, sensing the afterfragrance of decadent
elbow-brushing, not to mention reams of weak, workshopped (= 12-stepped)
lines. 

Walter Lew's remarks in his introduction to _Premonitions_ are also
relevant to this discussion. The Boston Review links have already been posted.

The bottom line with the IBM/nut joke seems to be how can we find a way to
place the onus of understanding the bad taste of this joke (in the context
of this list, and the granted frame of "isn't this a nice joke") on those
who find it amusing. I didn't find it amusing, I'm relieved to tell myself.
Nor am I going to get upset over another's interest in such humor.
Chauvinism abounds in the two countries I've lived most in, the US and
Japan, and I don't find it interesting, nor people that gain pleasure from
it (does one have to have been a victim of racism, homophobia, etc. to
understand why this joke is boring?). The fact is that many Americans and
Japanese find pleasure in such humor. I'm not for a police-state mentality
that would socially ban the presentation of such jokes on this list or
anywhere; I think we can learn much from such "slips." In the context of
this list (I hope I don't sound too corny) we might think of its
presentation as a test of our capacity to think from a global perspective
-- and constantly turn the tables on those who belittle others (here
Africans) to elevate themselves (IBM), and do so in broad brushstrokes. 
That it is a joke at the expense of Africans seems obvious, since the
fulcrum of the joke is an implicit comparison of IBM's (ubiquitous) power
and the imagined trivial task of cracking nuts. 

I came across a poem by W.S. Merwin, "The Asians Dying," when I was an
undergraduate some years ago and found it so maddeningly full of
stereotypes and assumptions that I composed a parody for the U Daily. It
was my way of dealing with his ignorance:

The Anglos Dying

(after W.S. Merwin's "The Asians Dying")


They step out of the Atlantic front
hacking forests into long halls, set
armories on one end, pentacles on their chests
and roar in the fire-light forward at each other -
beer abundant jostling from tall mugs.

The gold of angels' wings adorns the halls.
Daylight stirs them under shifting clouds
and St. Peter's silence soars until numbness,
the crucifix of arches leans to them; their wrists twitch,
their sides seem to bleed.
In the catacombs they remember, touch a skull
"Shattered by a spiked club;"
they want to believe, to never lose the shape of this blessing,
to never move, and sense from each other
undulations. Without hesitation

they try to take Asia - the missionaries
loaded with magic and resuscitating lies, fresh architecture,
myths of towers to heaven, of endless steps
to nowhere - the rage of languages and famine.

The Anglos advance into the shadows
they cannot see; shoulder to shoulder into the clatter
they cannot touch and raise the barrel's flash;
pierce the rain with a pointless sound;
poison farmlands and return from settling mists,
behind horizons muddying an ocean with sunsets.
Packing trinkets of brass they go back to the show
reading things like this. 





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