This book was recently brought to my attention by a colleague, who was at a loss as to how to respond to it. And now that my colleague has brought this book to my attention, I am now at a loss as to how to respond to it, and its larger implications. These larger implications include the position of Americans and American poets in relation to the “other,” or what has been historically delineated as “other,” who are of elsewhere, never here, and who are aberrant of the norm, never the norm itself.
My disclaimer is that I have not read this book, and while I would be interested in reviewing it, I also do not want my money to support it, and the exoticizing lens through which the poet/speaker views the third world primitives which serve the purpose as backdrop, as scenery for the I and the “elevation” of this missionary work in which the speaker has come of age.
This narrative is a part of the family of the imperialist writings of Theodore Roosevelt, and Frederick Jackson Turner, and the formation of the American Man through the taming and civilizing of the Wild and Dark (pigmented skin, unenlightened), childlike superstitious Other.
What is obviously troubling to me is this I white center versus black brown other existing marginally and only in relation to that I white center pervasive cosmology’s refusal to die out and become irrelevant, or pointedly criticized by American literary institutions.
The above poetics is and has been for many years now my anti-poetics, and we see how it is being constantly affirmed and reaffirmed, via the prestigious award bestowed upon it, and via its publication by a major publishing house.
I am also hyper aware that my position here, the above as my anti-poetics, is unpopular. I tend to believe that too many of us in practice subscribe and abide by and give power in so many ways to the above institution and accept our place on the margins. Few of us want to disturb the way things are. I feel like my being vocal of systemic, historical, and institutional practices meant to maintain our marginalization makes other writers and academics distance themselves from me instead.
I am also pretty certain that the more attention I pay this type of missionary work, the more power I am giving it. I would like to know what are effective strategies to ensure, to hasten its disappearance. Do we just ignore it and hope it eventually dies of neglect?
In the meantime, let me end with a poem here, Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden.”
Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another’s profit
And work another’s gain.
Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man’s burden–
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper–
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man’s burden,
And reap his old reward–
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:–
“Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”
Take up the White Man’s burden–
Ye dare not stoop to less–
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the White Man’s burden!
Have done with childish days–
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.
Russell Leong’s 
