I’d laugh if the poem got published in the New Yorker – and ended up being the only poem people remembered Alan Sullivan writing. A sort of Pooh Bear epitaph, if you like.

But, well, I despise Alan Sullivan and have since he arrived at Erato, so I am so damned biased I almost have to take the opposite position just so I don’t hate myself!

I’d say that most modern formalism is slight. It has no ambition other than to fit whatever metric goal the poet has. I always end up going too far in the other direction, making poems that are awash in death and carnage. There has to be a middle ground, somewhere.

“And am I the only who now desires to break into Julie’s house in hopes of overhearing her atrocious imitation of Harry Belafonte?”

You know not what you wish for. DAY-O!

I agree with you re Forster, by the way, and would argue that even his presentation of Aziz is better than his caricature of Godbole.

On the other hand, I find Paul Scott’s characterization of (say) Hari Kumar (the 1970s answer to Passage to India) in the Raj Quartet more successful. But then Scott stays away from characters he can’t find a way to empathize with, and rarely attempts to get inside the heads of “full” Indians.

The thing about the whole Sullivan poem deal is that the piece that inspired all this buzz was so very slight, and hardly worth the trouble.

Agree wholeheartedly, Jee. On a lighter note, was I the only one who was delighted like a driveling baby by the improbable line, “Rasta man blow Jamaica toke”? And am I the only who now desires to break into Julie’s house in hopes of overhearing her atrocious imitation of Harry Belafonte?

Like Rik and Scavella, I don’t have a problem with writers imagining (I won’t use the word “appropriate”) other voices but I am disturbed when writers imagine a representative voice of a different culture because that depiction so often becomes a caricature, a simplification. Even so sympathetic a writer as E. M. Forster loses credibility in his sentimental portrayal of Muslim India in Dr. Aziz in “A Passage to India.” Dr. Aziz is all Mughal poetry and courtly virtue; his crisis is one of injustice, not of spiritual turmoil, unlike his white counterpart. I guess all I am saying is that I am disturbed when writers stop describing individuals, and depict types instead.

“Physician, heal thyself . . . .”

I read the thread at Erato too, and flirted with the idea of answering it. My position is really rather like Rik’s — no problem with appropriating others’ voices, but didn’t think that the poem was worth the kerfuffle it stirred.
If I had the energy I could muster up some offence to take. But the piece is too vanilla to bother.

I have no problem with people who write poems in voices (or genders, or skin colours) other than their own. What I don’t understand is how someone could want to formalise a set of cliches into a strict pattern (XoXooXoX, though L9 – Rasta Man blow – is bollixed) and post it up for serious critique. Yes, it is technically excellent. Yes, it does capture a feel of the West Indies (through stereotype cliches). Yes, there is a hint of a scenario in the poem once you’ve clambered through those cliches. But so what?

As a poem it fails because it says nothing we don’t already believe (stereotypically and wrongly) about “Caribbean” culture and it’s interaction with tourism. Where’s the challenge? Where’s the revelation?

Where’s Scavella when you need her?