Funny enough, Trillin already did exactly what you suggest! See his 2003 poem “What Happened to Brie and Chablis?”

But like, if you’re here for your two-minutes-hate because the Gay Talese teardown moment is over, please proceed to make whatever uninformed assumptions about authorial intent suit your agenda. Trillin is not your enemy, though.

I’m pretty sure you’re pulling inferences out of your ass. Just because Trillin has written about food before doesn’t mean he’s the speaker, especially because he’s a very self-aware writer and the speaker in this poem clearly isn’t.

Not too worry. Mr. Trillin’s critics display little diversity, less literacy, and zero complexity. If they had one iota of any of the above, they’d know this is an ode to the food he loves the most. If you’ve lived in and love a city with a thousand Chinese restaurants, tried to crack the code, find the perfect fried…

Debate, if you see it a worthwhile use of your time, the accuracy of Trillin’s portrayal or the quality of his couplets, but I immediately identified the speaker as a Keeping Up With the Joneses type who felt the need to be on board with whatever the “hip” “new” cuisine was and felt confused and overwhelmed by it all…

Angry Asian Man ought to celebrate Chinese cuisine the way Mr Trillin has for 5 or 6 decades, cover politics and culture, travel, do some research, before he writes. You’re not all always going to be in 6th grade. Someday you’ll know that Bud Trillin’s hero (well, one of his heroes) was a guy who carried a note in his…

What does it feel like being one of the few people left who can suss out subtext?

Wait, you want the poem to fit in a fucking moral coda about how the speaker of the poem is in the wrong and has learned his lesson about cultural/culinary appropriation?

Poorly-constructed satire deserves to be critiqued, it’s the equalizer even literary people can appreciate. I think saying it’s satire, leave it alone is a very easy out. If for example the poem had ended on supposing all these foods didn’t exist as a means for the character and his ilk being ahead of the latest food…

Columbusing Columbusing ... eeek. How many more layers can there be? Is Decolumbsing Columbusing possible? How about Columbising the Decolumbisization of Columbusing? Are any of these things? Could they be?

No but seriously how about expecting readers to approach texts with more intelligence and skepticism instead of asking writers to dumb themselves down to readers who can’t understand simple literary concepts like irony and the distance between the author and the speaker?

I’d share your concern, but as an Irish-American, I’m still reeling from Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, so I can’t be of any help.

Yeah, that’s a valid critique. I don't think it's a particularly great or novel poem. I mean it's basically a white male writer Columbusing Columbusing, which is... yike. I’ve just seen a fair amount of people (on the internet, so you know, grain of salt, etc.) taking it straight, which is giving me second hand…

Just wait until Calvin Trillin finds out that there are actually different ethnic groups in China. And don’t remember to be bowled away by the sequel, “What do you mean, Chinese people don’t always speak the same language?”

Old White Man is confused by the world.

Like most sixth graders, the author of this report fails to consider that the author and speaker are not necessarily the same person and that the author might be using the poem to critique the speaker’s perspective.

“Have They Run Out of Provinces Yet? or, Calvin Trillin Attempts To Be The Next Rudyard Kipling”