Nate Marshall

Thank you for this, Nate. I have similar concerns.

I third that. My first instinct is to be offended at the appropriation of someone else's voice. The second is to be offended that the voice isn't even consistent. The third is to go back to my first instinct.

As a white dude, this poem makes me shudder. Seems a bit, um, pretentious and awkward. Perhaps I’m missing something also, but the poem sits wrong with me, as well.

It’s kind of a false poem all on its own — trying real hard for effect and cred — but the voice is what sinks it. It’s the voice of an invented character, and not an especially authentic or realized one at that. I wonder what #TheNation saw in this.

You know what The Nation saw in it. The same thing you’re seeing. They’re just okay with it.

Yeah, that's one thing I'd ask a student. Why are you writing this in this voice? What does it add to the poem? What does it detract? Especially with the inconsistencies. I think I'd like this poem more if it were written from a voice of an observer rather than a participant.

Just reads like a southern accent to me. Plenty of people of all races where I am from talk like this.

Let me just say that folks saying "lower class Southern dialect" as a way of saying it's not about race should consider the South is disproportionately Black and the lower class in the South is disproportionately Black because of RACISM.