Mission Work: Poems

By Aaron Baker and Stanley Plumly

In this prize-winning collection, a debut poet evokes his childhood as the son of missionaries in Papua New Guinea.

Mission Work is an arresting collection of poems based on Aaron Baker’s experiences as a child of missionaries living among the Kuman people in the remote Chimbu Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Rich with Christian and Kuman myths and stories, the poems explore Western and tribal ways of looking at the world -- an interface of vastly different cultures and notions of spirituality, illuminated by the poet’s own struggles as he comes of age in this unique environment.

The images conjured in Mission Work are viscerally stirring: native people slaughter pigs for a Chimbu wedding ceremony; a papery flight of cicadas cuts through a cloud forest; hands sting as they beat a drum made of dried snakeskin. Quieter moments are shot through with the unfamiliar as well. In “Bird of Paradise,” a father angles his son’s head toward the canopy of the jungle so the boy can catch sight of an elusive bird.

Stanley Plumly, this year’s guest judge, writes, “How rare to find precision and immersion so alive in the same poetry. Aaron Baker's pressure on his language not only intensifies and elevates his memories of Papuan 'mission work,' it transforms it back into something very like his original childhood experience. Throughout this remarkably written and felt first book, the reader, like the author himself, ‘can’t tell if this is white or black magic,’ Christian, tribal, or both at once.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9780544104440

Book preview

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

I

CHIMBU WEDDING

NOTEBOOK

COMMISSION

CARGO CULT

BONES

BLOOD DEBT

BIRD OF PARADISE

THE TABAN TREE

SECOND GENESIS

SING-SING KIAMA

SPIRITS OF THE LOW GROUND

THE RED SNAKE

BRIDE PRICE

THE WEAVER

THE ZERO IN THE BRANCHES

HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR BLUE-EYED BOY?

II

DEPARTURES

TARO

READ AND SAY NOTHING

ALBINO

A PRAYER

ABOVE KEROWAGI

WAR

EVIL SPIRIT

IN GURU WOODS

DARKNESS LEGEND

DITOWAGLE

THE DAY AND THE HOUR

THE LAST WAY

HIGHLANDS HIGHWAY

HIGHLANDS MISSION

Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright © 2008 by Aaron Baker

Foreword copyright © 2008 by Stanley Plumly

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Baker, Aaron, date.

Mission work : poems / Aaron Baker.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-618-98267-7

ISBN-10: 0-618-98267-1

I. Title.

PS3602.A583M57 2008

811'.6—dc22 2007041925

eISBN 978-0-544-10444-0

v2.0912

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following journals in which these poems, some in slightly different form, have appeared or are forthcoming:

Mantis: Darkness Legend and Sing-sing Kiama

New England Review: Above Kerowagi and "Spirits of the

Low Ground"

Poetry: Chimbu Wedding (reprinted on Poetry Daily) and Highlands Mission

Poetry Northwest: The Zero in the Branches

Post Road: Bones and Notebook

Prairie Schooner: Ditowagle, War, and Highlands Highway

Smartish Pace: Bird of Paradise

The Virginia Quarterly Review: Commission (reprinted on Poetry Daily)

For my parents

Foreword

Mission Work is set in the Chimbu province of the central highlands of Papua New Guinea in the mid-1970s, more specifically, among a clan of the Kuman tribe known locally as the Paugokani, the clan Aaron Baker's family settles with and their missionary father ministers to. The memory time of the poems ranges, roughly, from Baker's sixth through his tenth year, a time parallel to the seminal period of Wordsworth's childhood years at the start of the two-part Prelude, though the learning emotion here is as anxious in its recollection as it is tranquil.

The themes that cross over Baker's remarkable sequence of poems represent preoccupations as much as perceptions: the tension between the values and rituals of a Western religion and those of the archetypes and myths of a primitive culture; the differences between peoples and kinds of families; and the separation from, yet collusion with, the past of a boy's primary years in an alien but compelling world. How do the assumptions of an abstract, invisible spiritual realm sort with those of an incarnate, relentlessly palpable, natural reality? Is the rain that fills the leaves of the great taban tree baptismal or merely restorative? Can it be the one and the other at the same time? Can the Bible sort with, let alone stand against, the bow and spear? (I palm the black book. You notch your arrow.) Is it "white or

Reviews for Mission Work

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This poetry collection is based on the author's childhood as the son of missionaries living in Papua New Guinea, and, perhaps unfortunately, no reviewer could fail to mention this guiding concept because it is, simply, the one reason a reader might be drawn into this book. The concept is constantly tangible, and the poems have little life on their own unless a reader keeps it in mind. Few of the poems are comprehensible without the benefit of the full collection, and many are still far too abstract to truly connect to a reader unfamiliar with Baker's experiences and/or the culture.Language-wise, Baker's poems are unfortunately uninspired. Whether the goal of his work is documentary or poetic, neither is truly translated in the print of this work. As a reader, I was often able to follow his meaning, but uninterested because of the flat and straightforward language that left me apathetic. In the end, I'd have preferred a nonfiction work on the culture, or even a memoir, since I feel I might have gained more from that work. True, there was the occasional inspired line that was both interesting and graceful, poetic and meaningful--these, though, were few and far between, and nowhere near regular or outstanding enough that they made the book worthwhile.The book is an award winner, and Baker himself is a distinguished writer and professor--I can only guess that his poetic instincts were too at odds with his urge to translate his true experiences, or that he may have been too close to his material in this particular collection.Simply, unless you're looking for further sight into missionary work in New Guinea or the poetry that comes from such experiences, I wouldn't find reason to recommend this particular work.