Dear X:
In 2015, The Best American Poetry series anthology included a poem titled “The Bees, The Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve.” Perhaps you remember this poem, in particular the fact that it was authored by a White, male poet named Michael Derrick Hudson who published it under the name Yi-Fen Chou, the pseudonym Hudson used to get the poem taken by the literary magazine Prairie Schooner, which The Best American Poetry guest editor at the time, Sherman Alexie, then happened upon. Hudson confessed his true identity to Alexie after he learned of his poem’s anthology selection; he also confessed his use of the female Chinese pseudonym in the final published anthology’s biographical notes. Hudson wrote that he’d chosen the name only after the poem had been rejected…
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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, January/February 2021