by Ren Powell

I have always found it difficult to locate a comfortable place to position myself between respect and reverence when it comes to the “other.”

Surely it is a flaw in my character that I am not capable of honest reverence for anything created by human culture. But maybe it is a flaw in the character of all poets, the ability to empathize so often stretched to “identifying” with all the things we will never be: a horse, a tree, a cheese-grater … a Chinese miner. I doubt I am speaking only for myself when I talk of the poet’s (necessarily) narcissistic nature: We take on the voice that fascinates us, we work hard to find and express the “truth” we perceive within that voice, and we do the best we can.

I generally have no problem with this conceit. Which is not to say that it hasn’t caused problems for me.

This spring I attended a conference on “the other” in literature and spoke about my work with the Arab qasida, a pre-literate, pre-Islamic poetry form. I prefaced the talk by admitting I found the Arab language difficult to understand — even on the level of recognizing and reproducing “simple” sounds. My research was based on translations, the most responsible scholarship in the English language that I could find, and on interviews with Arab writers I know and respect.

The talk itself was about the narrative structure of the poem, the various literary devices that characterize it, why I was drawn to it, and what I (as a contemporary woman poet) felt was necessary to adapt when using the form as a model to express my own experience. When I finished and opened the floor for questions, one woman raised her hand and described my attitude as Orientalism*, which is one of the worst things anyone has ever said to me.

I didn’t handle the accusation gracefully. Reaching for a defense, I rattled and ranted about everything from theories regarding brain development in 2 year olds to toothpaste commercials. But there is no defense. I do not read Arabic and therefore have no primary sources. I have been inspired by the qasida through a degree (or two) of separation. And there is no denying that I speak from a position of social privilege in that I am a living and breathing white American graduate student.

So what does this mean? Must I spend the next decade studying classical Arabic well enough to read the 6th century poems before I can attempt to write a poem with the same formal structure and call it an American qasida? I have spent 17 years learning Norwegian and can tell you now with certainty that I could study Arabic for 30 years and would still not be able to completely appreciate the musicality or symbolism in the texts. Besides, when it comes to artistic appreciation, I believe that were I to thoroughly understand the “other” on his own terms — well, there would be no “intercultural” dialogue because I would have had to surrender the aesthetics governed by my own culture (and gender) in favor of the other. That isn’t artistic dialogue; it is a contribution to a series of monologues.

I had done my best to demonstrate the respect I had for the qasida and admit to my limited knowledge of the subject. However, I do not revere the qasida. I did not treat is as a sacred artifact from a foreign culture. I approached it with the same attitude that I would have had I chosen haiku or the pantoum. (I do not speak Japanese or Malayan either.) It is not that I am insensitive to the frustration of cultural stereotypes. (After all, I have been a “privileged white American in Europe” for many years.) On the contrary, I approached the research with an acute awareness of my own prejudices and narrow aesthetic and ethical viewpoints.

Still, no matter how I feel about my motives and intentions, my work with the Arab form is politically suspect. Two years of research has been relegated to a bullet point in a chapter heading in my dissertation. From an academic standpoint, this makes sense to me (considering the lack of primary sources), but as a poet I am feeling a bit disappointed. I thought I was doing something exciting, and now find I have been doing something I should perhaps feel ashamed of.

So, again: What does this mean? Is it really possible in today’s political climate to carry on intercultural dialogues through our poetry? Should everyone who writes and publishes haiku be expected to learn Japanese?

Do we seek out the influence of poets from other cultures? Allow ourselves to be influenced? Allow it and admit it and risk being accused of cultural stereotyping or colonialist tendencies? Allow it but keep it a secret and risk being accused of trying to pass off the ideas of another culture as one’s own?

Sometimes I feel the bigger my world gets, the more difficult it is to negotiate comfortably within it.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter …

* Orientalism has been described by one scholar as a combination of racism and sophistry in an attempt to make oneself appear to be an expert in a field, relying upon the ignorance of others in order to maintain an illusion of knowledge. Edward Said wrote Orientalism, an entire book about Eurocentric prejudice.

Ren Powell has published three poetry collections and eleven books of translations. She is a graduate adviser with Prescott College’s master of arts program and is pursuing a doctorate in creative writing at Lancaster University. Learn more at her website.