Americanization of Foreign Style, Sense, and Sensibility

[miyako73]

I had a chat with this literary agent. I paid him fifty dollars per hour for two hours. I wanted a feedback that would tell me if my work could be marketed. I basically wanted to hear his perspective as a literary (and a publisher's) agent.

I was shocked by what he told me. My works are too Asian, clean, and affected and won't sell or get published--his short conclusion. It seems even my violent and nightmarish poems are too peaceful. He advised me to Americanize my stuff and not be overtly concerned with grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. because there are American editors for those. Was he bull****ting when he said that? I thought he focused on my raw style, sense, and sensibility.

I thought hard and found his advice sound. One has to dance to a prevailing music. When he gets a stage, he can dance to his own tune. Since I am seriously into this, and I really want to learn and improve, I have decided to try that American style, sense, and sensibility, an experiment of sort in my part. I want to hoard poetry collections. I pick three male and three female poets:

Wallace Stevens
John Ashbery
Robert Lowell

Emily Dickinson
Elizabeth Bishop
Sylvia Plath

Do you think those are enough for my Americanization experiment? Thank you very much!

[Calidore]

I think one agent with one point of view is an awfully small sample to base such a change on. I also think you should exhaust all options for writing in your natural voice before trying to force an unnatural voice on your work. FWIW.

[islandclimber]

I might try to find a contemporary American poet or two, seeing as 5 of the 6 on your list have been dead for at least 35 years. I mean did he suggest you follow American trends 50-100 years old, or contemporary American trends?

I'm all four reading new authors/poets, and being influenced in one's own style by said writers, but I wouldn't forcefully push it through. Immerse yourself in American poetry of the last 100 years and see what comes of it without trying too hard to change your style.

Myself, I'm partial to the Eastern European trend in contemporary literature, which has not been so overwhelmingly influenced by Latin American literary movements...

[miyako73]

Thanks, Cal. It will just be an on-the-side thing. Learning elliptical writing and adding noises, layers, textures, dirt, chaos, and confusion in my writing style, I hope, will be fun.

Thanks, Island. I don't want to read new authors. I want authors whose works have traces of the old senses and hints of the traditional sensitivities, yet modern or contemporary to my hearing and feeling.

[JCamilo]

Of course, you must look for other views, but do not dismiss his opinion entirely. It is not surprising that he may have not found your nightmares that scary, they have enough disturbing stuff on their own. About the grammar, ortography, etc, he is being pratical. Any publishing house will hire someone (or more) to review your work for this. They are usually more nitpicking, detailists and know more about the subject than most writers. If you domain is good enough, your text can sustain a first view by the editor and then someone will work on it. So, you do not need to be a Flaubert, taking 2 months to finish page and can focus on something else.

[JBI]

I had a chat with this literary agent. I paid him fifty dollars per hour for two hours. I wanted a feedback that would tell me if my work could be marketed. I basically wanted to hear his perspective as a literary (and a publisher's) agent.

I was shocked by what he told me. My works are too Asian, clean, and affected and won't sell or get published--his short conclusion. It seems even my violent and nightmarish poems are too peaceful. He advised me to Americanize my stuff and not be overtly concerned with grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. because there are American editors for those. Was he bull****ting when he said that? I thought he focused on my raw style, sense, and sensibility.

I thought hard and found his advice sound. One has to dance to a prevailing music. When he gets a stage, he can dance to his own tune. Since I am seriously into this, and I really want to learn and improve, I have decided to try that American style, sense, and sensibility, an experiment of sort in my part. I want to hoard poetry collections. I pick three male and three female poets:

Wallace Stevens
John Ashbery
Robert Lowell

Emily Dickinson
Elizabeth Bishop
Sylvia Plath

Do you think those are enough for my Americanization experiment? Thank you very much!

He's just bull****ting you. It's impossible to sell poetry without connections and even more difficult to live off of it. Still, all those are old poets. Hardly cutting edge at all.

Basically that 100$ was wasted. If you want to get published in poetry you need to talk to a poet, not an editor.

Even so, if you want my honest opinion, it isn't the "asian" content that is the problem with your work.

[miyako73]

Tell me, JBI, so I may know. Maybe we'll become friends after this.

That $100 I gave was my decision so he would really read the stuff I gave him and he would be honest with me.

Can you recommend books that can help me with my project? Thank you.

He also said this:

"If you read too much Rumi or Li Po, slow down. They will corrupt your voice."

I don't plan on living off of poetry. I have parents I go to for my rent, food, even gambling allowance. And if they die, the more I don't need a job or a published poetry book to survive. I just want to grapple with this challenge called "being published" not self-publication, which I can easily do. They also just want me to write without worries. So, I want to learn and improve and eventually get published at the age of 40 or 50, if I'll still be alive or if I won't relapse. I'm 30 and some months, dyslexic, and bipolar. Thank you very much.

[JBI]

Tell me, JBI, so I may know. Maybe we'll become friends after this.

That $100 I gave was my decision so he would really read the stuff I gave him and he would be honest with me.

Can you recommend books that can help me with my project? Thank you.

He also said this:

"If you read too much Rumi or Li Po, slow down. They will corrupt your voice."

I don't plan of living off of poetry. I have parents I go to for my rent, food, even gambling allowance. They just want me to write. I also just want to learn and improve and eventually get published at the age of 40 or 50. I'm 30 and some months, dyslexic, and bipolar.

The "Asian" authors you speak of would actually help your poetry a lot. The main problem you have is you are self-absorbed on your poetry without the quality of sharing. Poetry is fundamentally a sharing art and must draw in the reader with something to be provoking a kind of interest. For the most part your poetry reads like somebody trying to be clever with themselves.

Keep it simpler and use better, not bigger words. Also give up the I and replace it with the You or We. Generally verse works best with solid sort of concrete metaphors that are pungent.

Even so, publishing poetry is near impossible without a real connection.

Either way, if you want someone to take you seriously, I suggest you break with both confessional trends and what you call Asian trends. The reason that, for instance Wang Wei wrote good Buddhist poems was not because he was writing Buddhist poems, but because he was a Buddhist writing poems that were good. Stop thinking of "using" and start using what you are thinking. That way you at least will be authentic.

Basically read 1000 poets and stop reading or thinking about them while writing. If someone wants to read them, they will read them. You need a more original style anyway, and if you wish to be influenced, you better understand the material.

Almost everyone using "Asianisms" in their works do not understand what they are talking about, and are thirdaging the material for an audience that either is eating kitsch or else doesn't care. I am yet to really see Chinese poetry incorporated as a sort of Chinese poetry in English verse. Even translation kind of "loses" the poetics of the original, so a third rate imitation of a translation is even worse. Goes the same with Arabic references and with Indian references. Even educated sorts like Eliot did some real butchering with Indian content, but he managed to get some of its essence.


I guess one of the differences is between believing and using. Believing, or enjoying works far better than using. So if you hold the artistic feeling for the work beyond an elementary level. That is, if you are buddhist actually, then Buddhism in your poetry will not be too artificial. My Chinese professor totally flopped on that notion while writing about Buddhism in Chinese poetry, while "looking" for keywords and ideas, he failed to see that virtually every post was a believer, most donating to monasteries and conversing with monks. You don't talk of them as writing Buddhist poetry, which is a fallacy, since we don't talk of Marvell writing "Christian" poetry in the sense that the verse is restricted.

if you are going to use other styles, make sure you agree at least with their aesthetic sensibilities. Don't copy them, make them personal, or don't touch them. As for grammar, write the poems that work for you in your own grammatical idiom.

[miyako73]

You are actually nice for taking your time, JBI.

That's another perspective I should look and try--an authentic Asian voice displaced in a disorienting marginal space, which is still Buddhist in concept like "lotuses blooming in fire" or "water lilies blossoming from mud".


Thank you.

[JBI]

It's lotus that blossoms from mud. That's why the image is often used to describe pretty girls from poor families.

There is no authentic Asian voice anyway. There is only an authentic voice. You would not say lotus blossoming from mud, since everyone knows lotus blossoms from mud, you would just say lotus and let the connotation sit there. Then if you wanted to play differently, you would say "lotus steps" to describe a woman's walking, which would both suggest elegance as well as the Buddha's steps after birth which he took in four directions, lotus blossoming in each (according to legend). But the metaphor is also deeper since it evolved into the lotus "feet" of bound feet, which symbolize both beauty as well as virtue (virtue from suffering, a neat metaphor, or beauty in suffering, another metaphor).

There is a lot you can do with any metaphoric tradition as long as you actually subscribe to the tradition.

[miyako73]

JBI, my request: please quit antagonizing me with small and negligible stuff and with things you can easily find yourself. Engaging with you is tiresome. I feel I have to prove or support every word I say to you. I see that as laziness on your part.

That thought "water lilies blossoming from mud" (water lily-mud pairing) popped up in my mind just like that. If something pops up in my mind that is coherent and clear, I am pretty sure it has a basis or source. My mind is full. I cannot keep on parrying your petty challenge. Just to find this poet, I wasted thirty minutes. Please don't tire me. Like you, I also read to the point that reading is now tired of me--how that happens, it seems, is only unique to me.

Zhou Dunyi
Song Dynasty

"I love water lily more.
It is pure and clean though it grows out of mud."

Chou Tun-I of Tang Dynasty also paired water lily with "slimy bed" (mud).


Regarding authentic Asian voices, they exist in the American literary landscape. They are unique voices appropriating their foreignness in America. Like Jhumpa Lahiri, her voice is Indian, but her stories situated in the US are American.

Thus, in my previous post, I said "an authentic Asian voice......." because there are many Asian voices in America today.

[JBI]

I was not meaning to be antagonizing, but rather correcting, but this kind of illustrates my point. Lily is a translation of 莲，or荷 which is better rendered as Lotus(which is its standard rendering now).

Zhou Dunyi and Chou Tun-I are the same person. Both are from the Northern Song.

As for Asians and authentic, I personally do not believe in a so called "Asian" me personally being an "Asian" by descent (Central and North Asian) as well as Middle Eastern (Israeli) and a "white guy", a "foreigner" a "Westerner" and everything else. The traditional notion of Chinese culture had it that anybody versed in Confucian ideas was Chinese by culture, so that the Tang emperors who were ethnically mixed were Emperors. In terms of authenticity, I am far more culturally Chinese than most Chinese people themselves, and have seen more of China than almost anybody except a selection of rich persons and politicians.

In terms of poetry authenticity is the difference between inspiration and copying, so that we do not read derivative poets, and poets composed purely of allusions. Such discussions were made clear in China and elsewhere over a thousand years ago. The main notion is you get inspired, you do not borrow. That's why the lyrical Keats could work the Spenserian verse far better than his philosophical eulogizer Shelley.

As for authentic Asian, you are probably look at as Authentic Asian as you are going to get. Asia itself is a very non-Asian construct.

You missed my main point though, it has to do with borrowing verses digesting and then making personal. Since we now have established the Lotus as a symbol, why would you need a further line about it reusing it. Anybody familiar with the former essay, which is every school child in China, will think you redundant. Merely say Lotus, and Boom, the connotation of growing through the mud, and Buddhism etc are brought in there. Zhou is not exactly talking about a flower anyway. Chinese poetry is quite elusive to readers namely because it is so reliant on metonymy and allusion. Zhou is layering on the meaning by encoding the lotus, rather than merely suggesting a flower. Nature in general rarely functions outside of constructions in East Asian verse anyway. A good book on the topic for Japanese culture is Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons. For China a book has not been written yet in English to any satisfactory level, but with hope will be. Either way, training manuals and poetry anthologies since the 4th century in China have been arranged by "item" categories, such as each flower, each tree, each star, wind, rain, etc to teach about proper use of symbol and allusion. Saying the lotus is good is deliberately calling something else bad, or rather, proclaiming the superiority of the mundane excellence (the lotus) over others. Such categorical referencing is so common that poets have written cycles on every category in the traditional books, such as the imperial poem cycle on things (120. Poems) by Li qiao (Li Jiao) commissioned as a didactic manual by Wu Zetian.

One of the general things people fail to grasp is how assigned Chinese categories are.

[miyako73]

Don't blame me. Blame Han Zao Li

The Water Lily Pond: A Village Girl's Journey in Maoist China

page 234


The Cho Tun I lapse is my misreading of "The Language of Flowers". He mentioned Tang in it with authority as if he already existed then.

Not everyone here is an expert of Chinese Literature. I have one room full of critical theory and studies books, but I only have ten books related to Chinese literature in my bathroom. Please don't be anal with us. Let the small stuff go if it won't affect the flow of the discussion.

[miyako73]

Anyway, let's proceed. I added the poem below for him to read, so I could also get a feedback. One of my minimalist styles is "effortless writing for effortful reading". For obvious reason, I don't find it challenging enough-no language play but play of serenity and silence. Two or three of this are fine, but a collection is surely boredom?


A Monk's Journey


To the left,
the poplar tree
by the river
that murmurs.

To the right,
the bamboo hut
on the hill
adoring the sky.

Behind, the road,
wide,
empty,
barren.

Ahead, the temple
of incense,
of saffron,
of nothing.


I found his response very enlightening. "Why would Americans read that from you when they have been reading Thich Nhat Hanh," he said. I think he is right. Then he added, "Remember Rumi is the best selling poet in America today." I did not know that.

[Lykren]

Personally I don't understand the value of paying a literary agent to have your poems critiqued. Ultimately it's up to you, who writes the poems, to critique them and improve them based on what you see wrong with them.

I don't know if there's any surefire way to go about improving one's poetry, but I feel confident saying that learning to take your time, to be honest with yourself when you write a particularly bad line, and reading lots of poetry, both modern (i.e. written by living poets) and older, are things that might have a positive impact.

What JBI says here:

In terms of poetry authenticity is the difference between inspiration and copying, so that we do not read derivative poets, and poets composed purely of allusions. Such discussions were made clear in China and elsewhere over a thousand years ago. The main notion is you get inspired, you do not borrow.

makes good sense. It is of course difficult to distinguish between novelty that will surprise one time and bore the next, and inspiration that touches on something deeply felt by yourself. Even when you are genuinely inspired, you still have to take the time to craft the poem, otherwise what you want to share will not be communicated as powerfully as it was felt.