To David Lehman

Leni Rogers

I will start this defenseless and mundane: let me tell you about my shower routine. I like to shower at night, feel the day slip down the drain while night spreads a blanket over my bit of the world. It’s a ritual about cleansing, each step brings me closer to a daily fresh start. To begin, I shave my face before the mirror fogs up and take my clothes off before the bathroom fills with too much steam. Once under the water, I use rosemary-mint shampoo and conditioner, oatmeal bodywash that smells like winter indoors, an exfoliating net I bought because I can wash it with my laundry and don’t need to keep buying new ones over and over. When I turn the water off, I sling a towel low across my hips and wrap another around my head, this one only big enough to hold my still-wet hair. Then I walk back to my bedroom, where I rub medicine into my shoulders and put lotion on every bit of me I can reach. 

I tell you all this not to bore you, but to show you that my guard is down. You seem to be sensitive to any kind of disagreement people have with you, so I don’t want you to picture the person writing this letter as someone puffed up and wearing armor. I am in the shower and I am naked and we can have a conversation about poetry under the warm water, where we both can relax. We can just be bodies, with no identities written onto us. Enjoy the everyday simplicity of it all, into which the outside world can barely penetrate. I know you are most comfortable this way, when things can simply be what they are. So remember where we are as I write this to you. The water is running and getting warm. Keep breathing in the steam.

Recently, I have found myself rubbing uncomfortably against all the poetic institutions that bear “American” as part of their names, including the one you established. I will tell you why, in great detail, but I first want you to know where I am coming from. Like you, I can’t name anything more precious to me than poetry and it is my greatest desire that the rest of the world hold the same reverence for it that I do. For this reason I do want to say “congratulations” on 38 years of The Best American Poetry; it’s a well loved anthology and there is no doubt in my mind that it has done great things for the careers of many poets and, perhaps more importantly, has made many people fall in love with the art form. I have been gifted copies of your anthology and have loved much of the pieces between its pages. Its retirement is surely striking an emotional cord for poets and poetry lovers of all sorts. If you had told me a few years ago that The Best American Poetry would be coming to a close before I even really got my poetry out into the world, I probably would be a bit upset. I would long for my chance to be included. Even just a few months ago, I probably would have felt similarly. I am, after all, an American poet and I want to sit among the best. But I am learning that I don’t necessarily have the same vision of poetry that you, or our country as a whole, seems to have. Stay with me, please. I am washing my hair now and you find the smell of my shampoo quite soothing. Let’s start somewhere else, so you can continue to relax. 

I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of $100 to my bank account since June. It’s the Academy of American Poets who owes me this money because I won the annual John B. Santoianni for one of my favorite poems I have written to date.  I would tell you where to go on their website to read it, but they haven’t even uploaded it despite promises of publishing it by late summer or early fall. Needless to say, I am a little annoyed: this is my first chance to have my name published on the same website that hosts countless poems by and bios about the poets I admire most in the world. But they have waited too long and over the past three months I have learned just enough to balk a bit at the eventuality of being published onto their site. When I think of the role of a poet, I think of the truth. I have always seen the art form as a sort of light: voices that are able to illuminate all those incomprehensible things that everyone can sense without always being able to understand. The poet can articulate the otherwise unsayable and can therefore create a kind of freedom within the bounds of the page. This is sacred work that I have always assumed must be kept clean and must not be interfered with. The poet has to be able to speak truth. The poet takes risks. The poet is dangerous. “The life of a poet… often involves running from a state” (Suzanne Gardinier, “‘And it touched me’: Poetry, Empire, and the Death of Pablo Neruda”). I am learning, however, that not every lover of poetry thinks these things and, at least in America, being a poet seems to have a lot more to do with glorification of (a certain kind of) individuals, with approval, and with the state. Allen Dulles, former director of the CIA (which itself has taken advantage of writers time and time again), was once given Honor Guest status at a 1959 Academy of American Poets event. Marie Bullock, the founder of Academy of American Poets, assured him that he would be seated “on the dais” (Gardinier). Bullock’s husband, Hugh Bullock, was said to have held great pride in the way different figureheads for war and business revered poetry as crucial in their work (Gardinier). From the March 1958 New Yorker profile of Mr. Bullock: “He frequently reminds his colleagues that at an Academy dinner a few years ago Thomas J. Watson, the late head of International Business Machines, testified to the indispensability of poetry in business, the late Admiral Byrd said poetry had been a solace to him in Antarctica, and General Maxwell Taylor spoke up ringingly in support of poetry as a help in winning wars.” I am finding that poetry is not, or at least was not, always in alignment with what I understand to be its truest and most necessary purpose in the eyes of some of these larger American poetic institutions. And I am sure many of the current leaders of the Academy of American Poets share my vision for poetry’s ultimate form. I read their poem-a-day newsletter most days and find many poets I love that way, poets who I feel confident do not want poetry to be entangled in war, business, and manipulation. But none of this erases the fact of Marie Bullock’s views, the roots of the organization. And none of that erases the fact that I still hope to have my work published on their website, to have my picture and my bio available for all to see. When I shower and allow my thoughts to drift, I start to wonder what it means for my values as a poet and as a person if I feel so dependent on being named by institutions that have once been based in beliefs so disparate from my own. I am American and I am a poet, but it is the joining of those two words that seems to keep getting twisted. 

See, Mr. Lehman, it’s not you. You are merely the person I am aiming my discomfort towards, though not without reason. It’s not you, but it is you. Consider this while we put conditioner in our hair and run a hairbrush through it to work out the knots… You created such a powerhouse. The Best American Poetry can hardly be avoided in any bookstore, in any university, on any bookshelf belonging to a poetry lover. My issues with your institution do not stem so much from individual editions of your book, but from the claim to “the best” and the choices that have been made and defended within that claim. The claim is a big one, laden with all the potential pitfalls that come with bias and judgment.  To combat this, different poets act as editors for each edition. The contributors to your collections often later become editors and are themselves given the chance to platform other voices they admire. So many of these poet-editors have done a beautiful job, creating anthologies that are rich and filled with life. It’s hard to argue there is not quite a vast range of work represented within BAP’s pages: just about every flavor of American poetry is included, from pieces that push back directly on claims like the ones bragged about by Mr. Bullock to pieces that are themselves fawning all over the state. Under this model, one would expect that the “best” poetry would be more closely defined as “all” poetry, or poetry for all. This structure would work nicely, if you were committed to it in your heart of hearts. Instead, I get the sense that you are more interested in crafting some exclusive club in which the true “best” is work that is somehow in alignment with your own values. The poet-editor set up feels like a way to save face when editors like the notorious Harold Bloom were allowed to ignore the anthologies that other poets put together simply because he was, frankly, being a bigot. When tasked with putting together a “best of the best” edition of BAP, Bloom refused to include anything in the edition put together by Adrienne Rich, stating in his introduction that it was “of a badness not to be believed, because it follows the criteria now operative: what matters most are the race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, and political purpose of the would-be poet” and that he could not get behind “the false generosity of any Affirmative Action in the judging of poetry” (Harold Bloom, “They Have the Numbers; We, The Heights: On The Best of the Best American Poetry, 1988-1997”). Nikki Giovanni had the good sense to call it as she saw it: “He is wrong. All racists are wrong” (Nikki Giovanni, “Harold Bloom's Charge That Multiculturalism in American Poetry is a Mask for Mediocrity”). This is an issue I have with Bloom, yes, but it is also an issue I have with you. Keep letting the conditioner soften your ends while we take the time to use soap on our whole bodies. You will want your body to feel clean for this next bit. You will want to take comfort in the restoration of your split ends. 

You were not neutral in the decision to exclude works selected by Rich in Bloom’s anthology. You were relieved when the backlash against Bloom’s introduction “helped sell books” (David Lehman, "Prophet of the Truly Great: Harold Bloom’s lasting influence”). You celebrated the controversy. I also think it’s fair to say you agreed with his claims— you yourself aren’t really fond of the moments when identity, and subsequent and unable-to-be-untangled politics, come into the space of a poem. You are “wary of politics as content; poetry has a way of turning into propaganda when subjected to the fierce but fickle pressure of the political” (Plume Poetry, “David Lehman: On Stevens, Windows, and Poems in the Manner Of”).  In the forward for the 2014 edition of BAP (edited by Terrence Hayes) you reject the necessity of platforming voices that have historically been brushed aside, even as the book itself highlights the importance of that shift. You write “It is vastly more difficult today to mount such a defense after three or more decades of sustained assault on canons of judgment, the idea of greatness, the related idea of genius, and the whole vast cavalcade of Western civilization.” You do not believe that the cannon deserves to be challenged and you believe all the same things Bloom does, you are just more careful about how you say them. You pretend to be simply concerned with the state of humanities, but the truth is revealed when you are willing to, with your whole chest, write in the same 2014 foreword about “a pattern of academic changes that replace a theory of education… with a consumer mind-set based on ‘narcissism, an obsession with victimhood, and a relentless determination to reduce the stunning complexity of the past to the shallow categories of identity and class politics… The contemporary academic world wants only to study oppression, preferably his or her own, defined reductively according to gonads and melanin.’” (The quotes you choose to employ in that statement coming from Heather Mac Donald, author of or contributor to books with truly astonishing titles such as When Race Trumps Merit, The Diversity Delusion, The War on Cops, and The Immigration Solution, but I won’t even get into that so as to save us both some time. Besides, I think it speaks for itself). The truth is revealed when you dismiss Anne Waldman’s poetry as “embarrassing, mere ‘women’s glib’” (David Lehman in Poetry January 1972, “Giant Night, by Anne Waldman”). The truth is revealed when you have a tendency to cite an overwhelming majority of white scholars and critics. You say you want poetry to be celebrated and loved by all, but only if it happens within the confines of your own definition of “best.” You are not willing to see the urgency of shifts within the world of poetry and you cannot celebrate the arrival of a new "genius" to the art form you claim to love. It’s not poetry you want to cherish, but tradition with no room for growth. 

Wash that body wash off. Rinse out your conditioner. Stand with me in the hot water, but no longer let it relax you. I am angry: I want you to feel the heat. The truth is revealed when someone tries to talk to you about Palestine. You say you don’t want poetry that focuses on an individual's own oppression or politics, but you just don’t want to hear a poet talk about anything that makes you uncomfortable or calls for change. You don’t want poetry to be all about other people’s experiences, you want it to be all about you. When a poet, Brionne Janae, recently gave a reading at a BAP celebration and ended it by saying “free Palestine,” you were angry. “To my surprise, you said ‘free Palestine,’ introducing politics into an evening devoted to poetry, to ‘The Best American Poetry,’ and to me… If you feel as you do about Gaza, you should rip up the check that I gave you, for the money comes from my pocket, and you do not want it known that you have accepted funds from a Jew and a Zionist” (email to Brionne, posted to their instagram @abitchislive). An evening about you??? Is that what this has been about all along? Earlier I said that we come from a similar place and have a similar goal of wanting the world to treasure poetry, but I don’t think that is true. You don’t want to celebrate new voices or make poetry accessible to all unless it is on your terms only. That’s all fine, but I hope you are comfortable with your stubbornness, your cowardice. Even though Brionne Janae lacks the power and prestige you have, they were honoring what poetry really is about: taking risks, searching for the truth, and pushing for a life worth living for everyone. If you are not for a free Palestine, I don’t think you are for poetry. 

Because what is poetry to you? Is it only poetry when it just pays attention to the mundane and the individual? When its only claims are those of the white man? I am glad for you that the things you so dislike in poetry can be so easily separated from your work and world. It seems nice to be able to make a game out of  “politics,” as though you are playing chess and you are twirling the pieces around in your fingers, examining them from all angles. Let me tell you a story: a few weeks ago I did typewriter poetry for the first time and a man drunkly asked me to declare to him my political affiliations. The girl he was with told him to shut up, told me to ignore him, and asked me for a poem about whatever called to me. I asked her about herself and learned it was her first night out since having her second baby, that she didn’t even come there with her makeup done but was pulled into the face paint booth and was suddenly a clown with stars on her face. I wrote her a poem about becoming and she cried when I gave it to her, pulled me into a tight hug where I could smell her jasmine perfume. I thought about turning back to the man and saying: “My politics are right now. They are poetry and humanity and I don’t even know if you can call them politics or beliefs or affiliations or whatever else when I can see them unfolding in front of me in this moment and everyday.” Does that make sense? If you want me to write a poem about the everyday, then you have to get comfortable with a little bit of everything else creeping in too. Not to mention your need for silence, for not saying things like “free Palestine,” actually makes as much noise as if you were hollering. Your politics are clear, even if you are too chicken to really say something meaningful, even if you play the supposedly neutral role. Where can there be no politics? Let us return to the shower… 

Let the water absolve you of all these accusations I have brought against you. I will turn the temperature down, so you can enjoy the relaxing steam and the soothing smells. I apologize for having lured you in under a false pretense, because even here I think you are wrong. We cannot just be bodies. In the simplicity of this ritual, the world and all its hurt rises up around us and we can never get as clean as we tell ourselves we are. There is dust that cannot be washed off; even here there are realities to contend with. I don’t mean to say that I am perfect. I will confess in an effort to get you to keep hearing me: there is a woman I love who lives in Gaza and I fear part of my shower routine is killing her. Her name is Mais and she has been listening to death all around her for the last two years. The medicine I rub into my shoulders daily is made in the same country that drops the bombs on her home. I am building the body I have always seen myself inhabiting: my shoulders are widening and my voice is dropping and there are new hairs crawling across my tummy and chest. Meanwhile, Mais lives in a tent and I wonder if these finally knowable hands are worth it if I cannot use them to build her family four new walls and a roof. My phone lights up while my day’s dirt disappears into tangled pipes below my bath: I don’t want to live like this. Her dust stays. When you shower, what stays? Does your defense for the country killing Mais wash away? Does the anger you felt you heard “free Palestine” stay stuck to your skin? Does your silence wash down the drain? Do you still believe that anything, any poem, can exist without politics? Do you still cling to your tradition, your exclusive club? I’ll get out now and leave you alone to think. Enjoy the rest of your shower.

—Leni Rogers

The poem that inspired this letter: 

Shower Thoughts on Culpability 

for Mais. 

I am thinking of nakedness, 

almost. I am thinking of things worn 

after the ritual of taking day 

into my body and rinsing it off 

as night spreads a blanket.

Towel slung low across my hips. 

Silk robe. Another towel, only big 

enough to hold my still-wet hair. 

Things worn when I am clean 

and I am clean. I shave my face 

and put on deodorant every day. 

I don’t repeat what I am told stays 

in a room. Clean. And yet I am thinking 

of the dust that can’t be washed 

off— of the woman who takes time 

to ask about my day before telling me 

about infections in her niece’s blood. 

There is no medicine and the nearest 

hospital was blown up. Label on my perscription 

tells me the same country is responsible 

for my body and the bombs. 

I am thinking of the tent this woman lives in, 

wondering if these finally

knowable hands are worth it 

if they cannot build her family 

four new walls and roof. We text 

we love each other every day;

I cannot say if it’s enough. What

is connection worth? If each evening 

all my day’s dirt disappears 

into tangled pipes below my bath 

as my phone lights up: I don’t want to live 

like this and her dust stays. 

Essays indispensable in writing this letter and in guiding my thinking (other than those directly cited):