Help me find this poem about picking coconuts?

January 14, 2021 4:30 PM

I'm trying to locate a poem. The author picks coconuts (or possibly bananas/something else) and plays up his background like his family has a long history and tricks of the trade for picking the coconuts, but it is really done in jest for white people who seem to expect such things. It uses some "Caribbean speak" to help play it up while indicating he actually speaks perfect English. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
posted by cokelessrome to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

Yes! I remember this story, I don't remember what it was though. It might have been a street vendor or something?

I tried searching google a few times but at least if you're crazy, we are crazy together.

It's probably not coconuts - aren't most coconuts picked by slave monkeys in thailand?
posted by bbqturtle at 5:13 PM on January 14, 2021

The Song of the Banana Man, by Evan Jones, 1956. [Scroll down for full poem]
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:21 PM on January 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

Is it Evan Jones, "Song of the Banana Man"?
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:22 PM on January 14, 2021

Response by poster: Unfortunately I do not believe it is Song of the Banana Man, although there are some elements that match what I described. The poem I'm looking for is shorter and had Caribbean-style speaking done ironically. It was mostly "proper" English.
posted by cokelessrome at 6:44 PM on January 14, 2021

To point out for those unaware - people's local dialect/patois is not somehow a lesser form of language than dialects from the US. Just because someone can code switch between two dialects, doesn't automatically make their use of their own local dialect fake!
posted by quacks like a duck at 10:48 PM on January 14, 2021 [6 favorites]

Just in case there are actually a couple of poems behind this, The Race Industry by Benjamin Zephaniah matches some, but not all, of the aspects you mention.
posted by protorp at 5:51 AM on January 15, 2021