Why do I do these things to myself?

A while back, I had the privilege of reading Vachel Lindsay's The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race for a class on modernism and post-imperialism. It is a STRANGE AS FUCK poem, because...well, it just makes no Goddamn sense whatsoever. It seems to have been written by two people. One is blatantly racist in that special early-twentieth-century way and may or may not have been in communication with H.P. Lovecraft. The other is a friend of W.E.B. DuBois, works with the nascent NAACP, and writes lines like 'Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost, / Burning in hell for his hand-maimed host. / Hear how the demons cackle and yell / Cutting his hands off down in hell.' And I don't mean that these segments appear to have been written by somebody who hated black people but hated what Leopold II did to them even more. Many of them are actually racially progressive. The whole thing seems to just have been cobbled together out of Lindsay's better angels and his darkest 1910s flights of fancy without any attempt either in writing or in editing to differentiate them. Then in the next part he goes into a thing about 'baboon butlers' and 'parrot bands' that (a) entirely ignores the actual distribution of African fauna and (b) FOR GOD'S SAKE, IT SOUNDS LIKE MARIA USHIROMIYA'S CHARACTER SONG. And for somebody who seems to want to get Europeans to leave Africa alone, Lindsay sure spends a lot of time harping on the 'inlaid porches and casements' that 'Shone / With gold and ivory and elephant bone' and 'long-tailed coats with gold-leaf crust / And hats that were covered with diamond-dust'. Then just as quickly he starts talking about how violence in this part of Africa originated with the Atlantic slave trade. Finally in the third section he apparently says that although Africa getting colonised by European nations is unfair and bad, it would be a good thing if Africa was colonised by...wait for it...ANGELS. Not some sort of metaphorical angels. Actual, literal angels.

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

THIS GUY WORKED FOR THE NAACP. THIS GUY DISCOVERED LANGSTON HUGHES.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

I can't say I recommend this poem to...anyone, really.