WHO I AM

John Bang

Prof. Perelman

ENGL 88

Paper #3

13 December 2009

Creative Assignment Portion: 

Bang, Jun Bae

adapted from “From Poem Beginning “The”” by Louis Zukofsky

[Dedication]

Because I have had occasion to forget, misuse, and borrow, I dedicate this poem to all those I have grossly misinterpreted and am therefore hopelessly indebted to. Also to Louis Zukofsky’s “From Poem Beginning ‘The’”—1-84, T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland and The Sacred Wood—9-15, 21, The Bible—26-34, The Merchant of Venice—66, 75-76, Where the Reference is to Zukofsky’s Reference to the French language—9-11, 30, 35-36, St. Andrew Kim Korean Catholic Church in Oakland, California—29-32, Obvious—Where the reference is Obvious—46, Symbol of our Most Perfect Self—Wherever the reference is to the word Mother, Songs of Praise—Where the reference is to American English—24,  Four-letter-words—63, 83, My Real Name—Where the reference is to the Korean language and mythology—78-84.

1 You who have never read Eliot or Zukofsky,

2 whose knowledge of English comes

3 from accounting, taxes, and bookkeeping—

4 to you whom the words “standard”

5 and “itemized” ring a bell,

6 I sit back in my chair at my 

7 highbrow university 

8 reading

9 The

10                   Waste

11                     Land,

12 in the land you came to

13 in search of the new, because

14 you felt my mind

15 could not be squandered.

16 Here I am—seven thousand 

17 miles from where I originate, from where

18 I first cried out—in contemplative study

19 of the classics you never imagined.

20 Rapt, imagery—

21 the remnants of a modern writing,

22 your eyes do not perceive.

23 I adopt the customs of 

24 the Western man, singing in church

25 and pouring ketchup at lunch. 

26 Did my great-grandparents believe in God?

27 We are different, we who kneel

28 and as much as

29 the Church stresses “posterity,”

30 “filial,” and “piety,”                it

31 is intra-city,

32 in a high-crime neighborhood

33 where sirens interrupt hymns 

34 in an observance that crosses the Pacific. 

35 Assimilate:         to what? 

36 To whom:           am I similar?

37 I do not speak fluently as most Koreans do.

38 Too dark, I might as well look Bangladeshi just as much as Ba—ng.

39 I have no accent, and though Asian,

40 I do not have squinty eyes:

41 I have eyes that like to read.

42 If neurons could sing, mother,

43 I would bridge this synaptic cleft. 

44 Mine would not sing to you, but yours

45 would sing to me. You have never read

46 Shelley, Wilde, or Austen, 

47 but in class, I read and write of them. 

48 I must submit no essay has taught me more

49 than what I have learned at home,

50 whether home was

51 Seoul, or

52 Kingsville, Texas, or

53 Chicago, or

54 Horseheads, New York, or

55 San Francisco.

56 I have moved, lost 

57 friends—

58 had to speak one language at school

59 and another at home. 

60 When, in first grade, I wondered about the silent “d”

61 in Wednesday, could I wonder to you?

62 Would those ears hear? When, in the fourth, I

63 used bad words in an in-class poem, could you

64 understand what I meant as the teacher thought she did?

65 But no matter, 

66 since I’ll better the instruction.

67 I’ll better them,

68 I’ll read those whom I have never met and

69 I will not be silenced,

70 or molded in, or melted into this pot

71 you call America. Because I am not

72 similar.

73 My odyssey commences 

74 at an Ivy-encrusted institution.

75 The status-seeking they teach me I will execute

76 And it shall be difficult for them, 

77 Having learned, as they say, in their colleges.

78 I, 42^nd son of the eldest son of the eldest son…

79 whose lineage is recorded for 

80 hundreds of years, of Jo- son, a perennial

81 civilization built on the backs of turtles,

82 My name being Jun Bae, not John,

83 Not that they give a damn,

84 Jeh irrum un Bang Jun Bae im ni da.