“And This is What I Saw”: (Un)Natural Waste in Cathy Park Hong’s “Fable of the Last Untouched Town”

Abstract

At its most philosophical, poetry can help us imagine alternative realities. In “Fable of the Last Untouched Town,” Cathy Park Hong manages to complicate current notions of nature by way of an unusual form of futuristic waste. Through the analysis of the poem, this article aims, on the one hand, to show how works of poetry can reflect and denounce some of the many ugly aspects of reality. Particularly, Hong can be said to draw in her poem an allegory of the pressing issue of e-waste. On the other, I intend to highlight how poetic imaginations can shake certain assumptions regarding those contemporary conceptions of nature and problematize the humanistic tendency in new materialisms and object-oriented theories. Indeed, an understanding of waste as the threshold which separates us from Nature might better equip us when facing the imminent change of paradigm that looms over our understanding of our place in the world.