To the Flying Inkpot,

I refer to Mr Kelvin Ha's reply to Mr Peter Wong's letter about Mr Ha's
review of First Words.  I am the project editor of First Words, a published
poet in my own right ('Iambus', 1994), 1996 Shell-NAC Arts Scholar and
soon-to-be English undergraduate at Oxford University.  It was with much
restraint that I desisted from replicating Mr Ha's surname a few times, in
the style of Paddy Clarke, after reading his review of First Words.  I did
not reply to his review because it displayed no technical appreciation at
all, but was a general discharge comparable to a burp.  However, in his
reply to Mr Peter Wong's query of his review, Mr Ha puts forth a few
insidious opinions which urge careful review.

This time Mr Ha writes: "the problem I had with First Words was not about
writers putting themselves into the shoes of others. What I found disturbing
is that in attempting to convey their thoughts and ideas, a fair number of
the poets have resorted to a style and language which is clearly not theirs.
They have recycled the form and language of earlier poets held in great
esteem by the academic community. They have imitated the style and thoughts
of Wordsworth and other poets of the poetic canon. While Wordsworth,
Coleridge and the other poets who inspired the young writers of "First
Words" were indeed great artists of their time, their language is now a
mockery and, in certain quarters, hardly qualifies as poetry at all if
you're under the age of thirty. Romanticism was a failed movement of the
past and should be left in the classroom. It has no place in the modern mass
culture of today." 

It does not take a literature major to recognise that the first two
sentences above are self-contradictory.  How does one write outside of one's
shoes without using a language "clearly not theirs"?  Is the language of,
say, a long-married man or a Malay kampung girl the same as the language of
a typical English-educated creative student?  Nonetheless, a close look at
'First Words' will reveal that the majority of poets (prose-writers and
playwrights are not included here for obvious reasons) are writing as
themselves, as recognisably young, English-educated creative students.  The
diversity and exuberance of language in the book is so obvious as to
pre-empt any attempt to assign a common influence to the writers.  If Mr Ha
can produce an extensive list of influences in all of the young poets
featured in 'First Words' to prove his case - and I am particularly
interested in the Wordsworthian one, as I had selected the only poem in the
book with a Wordsworthian reference to lend a different and self-aware
perspective in the renderings of creativity and in the book, and there is
perhaps only one other poem in the whole book with a Wordworthian slant - I
shall very much look forward to reviewing it.  I'm afraid I fail to see any
Coleridge in the entire book; perhaps Mr Ha would be good enough to
enlighten me by pointing out specific examples.

If that were all the fallacy Mr Ha is propagating, the harm might be
restricted to a few sneers at the writers of tomorrow, but I take offence
also at his offhand dismissals of "Wordsworth and other poets of the poetic
canon".  Wordworth has won his place in the canon simply because his art
speaks to humanity (or, at least, to a humanity that has the sensitivity and
intelligence to understand) thus becoming "timeless" in more than one sense.
He was indeed "a man... endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm
and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more
comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind" (Preface
to 1802 edition of Lyrical Ballads).  What if the modern response to the
Wordsworthian non-relational 'ec-statis' is not Wordworth's retrospective
recognition of value?  What if it can be traced to Keats's attempt at
dissolution of the duality of subject and object?  What if Pound's solution
was in using pure metaphor, because unlike metonymy, metaphor is, like the
'ec-stasis', non-relational?  What if William Carlos Williams's advancement
on this was to attempt kinaesthetic internalisation, to integrate subject
and object in non-relational 'potential space'?  Is he suggesting that each
poet in turn invalidates the previous?  A useful conception of the creative
process may be drawn from E.M. Forster's 'Aspects of the Novel'.  Forster
writes: "Another image better suits our powers: that of all the novelists
writing their novels at once... 'Oh, what quenchless feud is this, that Time
hath with the sons of Men,' cries Herman Melville, and the feud goes on not
only in life and death but in the byways of literary creation and criticism.
Let us avoid it by imagining that all the novelists are at work together in
a circular room."  This proposition generated much argument for and against
it, but it is at least more true to the creative process than that
simplistic one of writers deliberately copying from other writers.  A
similar argument is advanced by Jorge Luis Borges, in his essay 'Kafka and
His Precursors': "In the critic's vocabulary, the word 'precursor' is
indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemics or
rivalry.  The fact is that every writer *creates* his own precursors.  His
work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.  In
this correlation the identity or plurality of the men involved is
unimportant."  Borges's delicate distinction in using and italicising the
word 'creates', instead of 'selects' or 'copies', is notable.

I wonder that Mr Ha should dismiss the largest intellectual spirit of the
19th Century as a "failed movement" without at least attempting to support
this assertion.  Even if one does feel that Romanticism has failed in its
ultimate aims, one should pay credit to its fruit and recognise how sweeping
its effects on modern thought have been; modernism may be conceived as a
giant binary opposition to Romanticism, its most fertile soil.  At this
point, perhaps Mr Ha's later statement may be considered: "In other words,
the older poems lost their connection with reality because they had nothing
to do with real life as the people knew it.  Neither did it express the
nature of the age they lived in. The extended hyperbole and euphemism of the
earlier times is now redundant and does not provoke a response anymore."  In
this statement is condensed Mr Ha's  ignorance of the aims of the Romantic
poets, whose work I take Mr Ha's throwaway "older poems" to refer to.  Of
course the Romantics were not at all trying to gratify an audience or to
"express the nature of the age", but to give full rein to the limits of
their expression - emotional and intellectual.  Whether they  did "express
the nature of the age" they lived in is irrelevant.  That they eventually
did - for why else does Mr Ha refer to a Romantic movement? - shows their
influence.  Mr Ha's word-choice in "los[ing] connection with reality" is
especially clumsy, in the light of the fact that many Romantic writers were
trying to grasp and recreate an expressionist reality, thus becoming the
forerunners of modernist self-consciousness.  The examples of Wordsworth and
Keats have already been quoted above.  It seems that Mr Ha has been caught
up in the recently-hip trend of Marxist criticism, with  "express[ing] the
nature of the age" sounding like a more empty echo of ideological discourse
in literature, and his insistence on young writers using a specific
(imaginary) voice tends rather to corroborate this.  But that's not the
be-all and end-all of criticism.  What about Mr Ha's injunction that writers
"should capture the spirit of the times and society one lives in"?  Even
Marxists critics did not issue this order to writers of their times; Louis
Althusser, for instance, conceived ideology as the imaginary ways in which
people represent to themselves their relationship to the world.  Therefore,
any writing in some way or other (yes, it may be other than the
straightforward mirror that Mr Ha seems to suggest is the only true option)
reflects the "spirit of the times".

I regret that I also fail to apprehend how Mr Ha's age ("if you're under the
age of thirty") can affect the quality of poetry.  Even a citation of
reader-response criticism may not justify Mr Ha in this case, since that
criticism, although stressing the reader's role in producing meaning,
largely does not support readers' tyranny over the text; Hans Robert Jauss's
theory on the fusion of horizons ('Towards An Aesthetic of Reception' -
perhaps most relevant here), Wolfgang Iser's implied reader (his reception
theory distinguishes response and actualisation) and Roland Barthes's
structuralist codes may be considered here with profit.

In between his ideological sniping, Mr Ha idly takes down Prof Edwin
Thumboo's 'Ulysses and the Merlion' and my own 'Shape In The Tower'.  He
writes of 'Ulysses' that "this particular poem is so different from his main
body of work".  Did it ever occur to Mr Ha that the difference referred to
may not be accidental?  Given Prof Thumboo's experience in poetry, would one
not do better to assume a purpose to this difference and investigate the
reasons for it?  It might lead to a better understanding of the poem.  Why
did I set my poem in an Old English setting?  Because, in order to define
the theme of the poem, I needed a physical setting which had the weight of a
repressive authority masquerading as a moral and absolute one while being
amoral and relative, as well as structural strength, martialism, a physical
integration of the symbol of authority with the populace and a particular
kind of lighting, or darkness if you wish.  Hmm... which Asian examples
would do?  Medieval China: isolation of authority wouldn't do.  Qing China:
invasion of the West is irrelevant.  Modern China: problem with moral
authority.  Ajanta caves: very good lighting, but where's the authority?
The Malaccan Sultanate: physical strength of the structures dubious.
Singapore: hardly martial (thankfully!).  It may be said of poetry that it
is an art of compromising to attain a meaning over which there should be no
compromise.  Technique in good poetry is always subordinated to and
determined by the purpose.  In this case I set the transfiguration which
contains the theme elsewhere, but this move reaps the rich rewards of all
the layers of meaning I required.  If Mr Ha had understood the poem, he
would see that none of these layers could be given up.  In this case, the
focus is humanity; but, of course, in general, setting a poem in another
country does not mean that it becomes any less Singaporean: it could easily
be a Singaporean response to another situation.  Mr Ha in his opening
paragraph has already conceded that writers may use imaginary perspectives
to write from.  Why does he change his mind now? 

Mr Ha also writes: "With our short attention spans, we now crave instant
excitement, and long poetry definitely cannot provide this... We want poems
that get straight to the heart of the matter as our attention spans last as
long as the four minute song we hear on the radio."  I would encourage Mr Ha
to speak for himself only.  As it is, Mr Ha only betrays his own
insecurities.  Perhaps then, he has not been able to read this far.  Mr Ha
also writes: "Just read Ming Cher's Spider Boys.  Afterall, with mastery of
the English language being taken from the hands of the English themselves
these days, who is the arbiter of what is appropriate English or not?"  I
submit that the problem with this viewpoint is that it erodes standards.
Would anyone like his/her children to grow up thinking the prose of 'Spider
Boys' is good English?  I do not claim to write perfectly, but at least I
try.  With linguistic theory arguing stridently that language determines
(and circumscribes) thought, surrendering accuracy in language may be
thought of as equivalent to surrendering accuracy in thought.

Writes Mr Ha: "The main problem, in my opinion, is that many of our young
writers "borrow" from the literature which they have read.  More
importantly, write with your own voice, the one in your head which you live
with everyday, and not with the voice you read of only in books."  I shudder
to be the imaginary young writer of his first sentence.  Because I do indeed
write with my own voice, as those who have seen my work would testify to.  I
do not wish to write the kind of poems Mr Ha says I should write, since I
would then truly be someone false, someone other than I am.

As Mr Ha's letter might lead us to conclude, the first, important step
towards effective criticism is understanding the text under examination.  Mr
Ha seems to place rather little emphasis on this.  I can sympathise with his
cursoriness given his deadlines for articles, but I cannot agree with it.

Yours faithfully,
Toh Hsien Min

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