“Poetry is a forgiving medium for anyone who’s had a strained relationship with English.”

Stumbled upon this in @cathyparkhong’s new book Minor Feelings. Thinking about how poetry is at once a genre where “mastery” of language is praised... & a way to experiment, to unmaster

Thinking about my own anxiety re: English grammar. How in my first MFA workshop, the prof dissected a line of mine on the board (on the board!)—as an example of a dangling modifier. The shame I felt—as if I’d let down my family & also every Asian American!

I knew it was ludicrous, that level of shame, but I still felt it. & I still feel very anxious re: prose—my sentences feel more exposed, to scrutiny in terms of conventional grammar. Poetry seems a place where my own rhythms—my own breaths, however “incorrect”—can get a chance

Wondering: how much of my writerly identity has been bound up with being “better” at English than my white peers? With needing to prove something—authenticity? Americanness? How I bought into that assimilationist game & have been trying to disentangle it, puncture it, talk back