Yong Shu Hoong

Along with the book by Cyril Wong that I mentioned recently, I have also read another book by a poet from Singapore: Frottage, by Yong Shu Hoong. I first read Hoong's work in Wong's on-line poetry magazine Softblow. (Disclaimer again: I've had work in that magazine.) I was interested in reading more, so I traded books with him (the best way to get poetry published in Singapore!).

With my mind on Wong's tsunami poem "That Day," what struck me most in Hoong's book was a poem called "Ground Zero"—not, as an American might expect, a poem about the destruction of the World Trade Center or the site thus created, but a prose poem about visiting the site of the discotheque bombing in Bali. These poems provide perspective on "September 11" poems by Americans: here are poets from another country, vividly and memorably addressing the tragedies of their own region. To read these poems and then turn back to poems about September 11 is to widen one's perspective, even if the September 11 poem in question has as broad a perspective already as, say, Martin Espada's "Alabanza."

Cyril Wong

Back in January, I read the Singaporean poet Cyril Wong's like a seed with its singular purpose. (Full disclosure: Wong is the editor of Softblow and has published my poems.) It's quite a memorable book, with several highlights that I keep coming back to. There's a lovely poem, "that day," about the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004. (It's available on-line here.) As every good collection should, this one has some great lines:

"Happy the atheist that buys the poor man a meal, no thought
of your kingdom in her head."
(from "walls, loss of light")

[about an argument with a lover]
"Sorry is, once again, insufficient."
(from "before the afterlife")

"If squatted on the table and peed into our food, while we
ate as a family without once looking at each other, tasting
something sharp in our mouths."

"If my self is a shadow, at least I made a dent in the light."
(both from "if ... else")

"Before the afterlife" is the really memorable sequence in the book, about two gay men living together in Singapore, where a certain circumspection is still necessary, at least with the families of the two men. Several of the poems in the sequence are quite striking, including the one I quoted from above, but this is my favorite longer passage, from section 7:

................................ Two men dancing

naked in their own home, bodies pressed
against each other and swaying unhurriedly

to that unspectacular rhythm, in the light
of an ordinary Saturday afternoon.