May 20, 2019The Turkeys by the Road Consult with the DeerAmy Miller

“Honestly, I hardly ever write in persona anymore. It used to seem like such a great way to break out of the ‘I’ rut, to take the photobombing poet out of the poem and turn the camera outward, which, incidentally, was my mother’s definition of maturity—seeing outside the self. But white writers like myself have always taken that too far, appropriating and fetishizing and diminishing people of other cultures by stepping into their shoes for a moment and pretending to understand their experience. Persona poems are at a crossroads. What viewpoints are we assuming right now that we have no right to assume?”