Toh Hsien Min (b. 1975)
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Recomposing “Decomposing”
Written by Toh Hsien Min
Dated 19 Jun 2020
Sometime in 2019, I excise “Decomposing” from my next manuscript with a stroke across the poem like the slash of a katana. Alongside it is a less dramatic “Xp”, which marks disapproval while acknowledging a previous publication, by Wild Plum Poetry from the USA in 2004.
In the same manuscript folder, an A4 sheet containing edits for poems written early in 2020 includes the following fragment:
Evidently it is hard to give up on ‘Decomposing’. In February, Joshua Ip broadcasts a call to revise a previously published poem. Upon sitting down on Leap Day to contemplate my response, the idea that editing a poem is about decomposing and recomposing an already composed poem makes it inevitable that my subject would be a poem with the perfect title and facets I identify as suboptimal: the unevenness of the lines, the jagged rhythm of awkward enjambement, and the suspicion that some words fill a structural need with hollow content.
Some of these are implied in that first fragment. It tests the substitution of “field” with “wild” – tentatively, given the question mark – but I recheck and find “field / mushroom” to be a specific reference, to Agaricus campestris, which grows in Singapore. One may plant a cautionary flag that returning to a poem years after its origination carries the hazard of inadvertently writing over something intended. As it stands, “Like a field / mushroom” violates one of my guidelines on successful enjambement, viz. not to separate spaced compound nouns. Here, eliminating the second “of you” frees up the requisite space:
This trades off one imperfection for another however: “Líke a fiéld mushróom” is only borderline acceptable because of the respective vowel quantities. Scansion is often taught as binary – each syllable is either accented or not – but in truth words attract different levels of stress and these levels are dynamically varied by neighbouring stresses. Here, the heft of “field”, as the leading edge of the compound noun, oppresses “mush” somewhat and allows the inherently long “room” to catch up. In comparison, one cannot similarly rebalance “large toilet”, whose second word’s second syllable is too slight to ever bear stress.
The other decision tested in the fragment is to change the opening line to allow the pairing with “stride”, which addresses dissatisfaction with the word in situ: “loose” comes across as loose. Why would “fingers” be “loose”, a property that perhaps belongs more to the crumbling mushroom? And why would the persona go around touching wild mushrooms? On its own, “stride” seems to reap advantages without generating new challenges – the trochaic inversion of the next line is inherited, and locked into place by “tender skullcap”. So these lines can become:
However, as with any strictly formal poem, no decision is free. Every change attracts a cost to be weighed up against the benefit. Here, “I’ve to decide” introduces, with the spoken contraction, an informal register. Would subsequent lines have to switch to “you’re gone” and “couldn’t” for consistency? Moreover, this version also assumes independence from the previous decision, which is clearly not the case; moving “mushroom” up both creates a one-foot vacuum to be filled and invalidates “yield”. Which word might replace it (“doom”? “loom”?) and will the resulting pair improve on the existing one? In case it isn’t obvious already, this Sudoku game is why I have little time for relatively unchallenging free verse.
I pause there. On the Sunday, back at my parents’ home, I trawl through manuscripts from over a decade ago in search of the scrawled genesis of the poem. I find about half the poems written in 2002, but no trace of ‘Decomposing’. Still, peering at ant-sized letters on yellowing paper, I realise that “field / mushroom” has its own raison d'être: form here is harnessed performatively: breaking the compound noun over the boundary of the line enacts the mushroom breaking apart. At once, the configuration of options reverts towards the original.
A few days later, I start again:
It seems the “decide”-“stride” nexus and tonal consistency win out over the specification of “Now”. Likewise, “some more” disappears to maintain the integrity of a clause within the line, while engineering optionality for the rhymed line end. I also reconsider the echoing “feeds… feed upon”, but conclude that the inversion of roles adds intrigue and reinforcement of the ecological flavour, even if this necessitates reconstructing the rhythm. Next comes a line I have come to detest, for “dangerously gratifying needs” seems so much empty fluster, but among the possible rhymes I find no compelling materials, so pause the poem once more.
Over a long black the following Saturday morning, I resolve to keep an expression for a “concept of us”, and cast a line to fish for something suitable. A perfectly iambic line rolls off my pen and I mark the stresses almost out of disbelief rather than as a check in earnest. Misgivings then take over and I explore other permutations but eventually cycle back and make a minuscule note that retaining “dreams” maximises the idea that feeding upon something makes it disappear.
The sestet brings new hurdles; I like only the opening and closing lines. I read intent into comparing plants as the transformation of the nutrients of the decomposed mushroom into new life, but find the phrasings maladroit. I retain “power”, but nothing after that; I test out “The power in my choice of what to love” and decide it is not worth the usual struggle with the limited rhymes for “love”; I become enamoured with the underrated word “tend”, both for its etymological links (to “attend”, for instance) and for the whisper of a suggestion of its cousin “tender” (to which it is linked by Old French “tendre”), only to run down a rhyming dead end.
By Sunday, my choice of word has consolidated, but without a clear trail ahead I am floundering.
These lines introduce cheap sentimentality, so I abandon them. On Sunday evening, it occurs to me to solve the issue of the pairing for “tend” by redesigning the rhyme scheme in the sestet so that the rhymes are further apart. This triggers a blossoming:
Initially I water generic plants, but then realise the two original plants both produce eyecatching flowers and prickly thorns so write them back in. Assembling all these decomposed pieces produces a new poem, which I adjust further – for example, finding the rhythm in “until, eventually, you are gone” compromised by the insertion of the subsidiary clause, I fix it by echoing the future of the past in the future of the present.
Decomposing
Thinking of you means having to decide
which part of you to think of. Like a field
mushroom that decomposes as my stride
brushes by its tender skullcap, you yield
and fall apart. Your white flesh feeds the grass,
reminding me you used to feed upon
our dreams of all things yet to come to pass.
I know in time to come you will be gone.
But even as you continue to rot,
such power in my choice of what to tend
will make a rosebush for a flower show
or a mimosa weed that will defend
its patch and let no other flower grow –
I could be generous. Or I could not.
Reviewing my objectives, I cautiously check them off: the lines are less uneven, the rhythm has improved, and the choice of words has been tightened. I’m unsure if this version of the poem is one to be happy with, and poll some friends. To my surprise, reactions are split exactly evenly between the old and new versions, though I observe that everyone who has done significant work in formal poetry has preferred the new version. Perhaps judgements on the quality of the new version can only be made with the passage of time, and this recomposed poem has not sunk as deep roots as the poem from which it draws its nutrients. But if Auden’s paraphrase of Paul Valéry (“A poem is never finished; it is only abandoned”) carries truth, then for the moment I can abandon the poem here.
