Does the truth about an artist’s race diminish his work?

It’s a controversy that has rocked the world of poetry, which is a very small world and therefore easily rocked.

Our own Sherman Alexie is the editor of the 2015 edition of Best American Poetry, which each year publishes what are considered the best poems.

Among those poems is the one on page 25, called “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve,” by Yi-Fen Chou.

It’s about 20 lines, and in it Yi-Fen Chou talks about the absurdity of desire.

But that’s not the controversy. The controversy is that after the book came out, Yi-Fen Chou revealed that his real name was not Yi-Fen Chou. He’s actually Michael Derrick Hudson of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who works at the public library.

He explained that he had been trying for a long time to get that poem published, but it was rejected 40 times &#8212 until he changed the byline from Michael Derrick Hudson, white guy, to Yi-Fen CHou, Chinese guy.

Here’s an excerpt:

Huh! That bumblebee looks ridiculous staggering its way

across those blue flowers, the ones I can never
remember the name of. Do you know the old engineer’s

joke: that, theoretically, bees can’t fly? But they look so

perfect together, like Absolute Purpose incarnate: one bee
plus one blue flower equals about a billion

years of symbiosis.

“If this indeed is one of the best American poems of 2015, it took quite a bit of effort to get it into print, but I’m nothing if not persistent,” wrote the author.

Hudson’s critics called him racist, and a blogger known as Angry Asian Man accused him of using “yellowface” in poetry.

But he says it’s no different than anyone who uses a nom de plume.

Alexie said he tried to be even-handed in reading submissions for the anthology, but admitted he was “more amenable” to the bees poem because he thought Yi-Fen was Chinese-American.

And yes, he still loves the poem despite knowing the truth about its author.

Alexie wrote a great tweet about it: “I’m exhausted by the Best American Poetry mess but, wow, how cool that so many people are crazy-passionate about poems.”