Eddie Tay
FEATURES / TRACK CHANGES
Choices [and Revisions]
Written by Eddie Tay
Dated 19 Jun 2020
To understand a poem, one reads the poem. A poem is judged on its own merits. In truth, however, a poem is read alongside other poems, whether written by the same author or by others in the same collection. This is really where judgement begins.
Choices
I remember spring onions
and a colleague from Hampshire
who was strictly vegetarian
till he came to Hong Kong
and smelled char siu and siu yuk on my rice.I remember there were times
I can’t be bothered
and simply told the waiter
I’ll have what my son was having.I remember an all-day breakfast
on a Monday evening in an Irish pub
at Tsim Sha Tsui with a friend who’s
chasing the bacon, sausages
and potatoes around on his plate,
worried about his job at a bank.I remember at a generic mall in a generic restaurant
my impatience and sighs when my son, daughter,
wife, and mother-in-law took too long to decide,
whether to go à la carte or have shared dishes with rice,
and if it’s shared dishes whether to go with double-cooked pork
not too spicy with less salt or chicken with pine nuts
plus a vegetable dish or actually
there’s no need to have a vegetable dish
since the meat dishes come with vegetables
plus a few dim sum items or maybe
we should go à la carte after all,
with my son choosing wonton noodles,
my daughter wanting shredded chicken noodles
my wife saying she’ll have double-cooked pork
and chicken with pine nuts and a bowl of rice to share with me
and my mother-in-law wanting just a basket of siu long bao.I remember how we could never go wrong with food
in Hong Kong, till it was whispered that lunch
the other day was really an interview.I remember a dinner with some Guinness
at that above-mentioned Irish pub
with a new colleague
who was trying to be polite.And an extra sneaky Guinness
and having to wait an hour before I leave
simply because there were hardworking policemen
pointing their speed guns on Friday evenings.
“Choices” was published in the online edition of World Literature Today in its Spring 2019 issue, together with my other poem “How I Impress Others with my Cantonese”. Both poems are about eating food in Hong Kong. My contributions were published in a section focusing on Hong Kong writing. Placed alongside Bei Dao’s essay “Dwelling Poetically in Hong Kong” as well as the works of Xi Xi and Xu Xi, I know the pieces are in good company.
However, “Choices” was not featured in the print edition of the issue, which featured my other poem “How I Impress Others with my Cantonese”. No reason was given, though it was easy to see why.
How I Impress Others with My Cantonese
At a dim sum restaurant
you’ll need to ask for la jiu jeong (chili sauce),
la jiu yeow (chili oil), or dao ban jeong (bean paste sauce)
depending on your preference.Try not to use Cantonese
after saying hi
if you’re paranoid and unsure
because that’s a rude word
in Cantonese.Siu mei is not siu mai.
San fu (priest),
san fu (new pants),
san fu (uncomfortable/difficult).If you’re not sure just
ask for har gow, siu mai,
and char siu bao
and certainly not phoenix claws
unless you like unmanicured chicken feet
(which I do, actually).I’m usually given a Chinese menu
because I’m visibly Chinese,
because I speak Mandarin
(though it’s called Putonghua in Hong Kong)
better than Cantonese
I may be mistaken for a mainland Chinese person
but because I took Chinese as a second language
in school and scraped by to get into university,
I can barely recognize the traditional Chinese characters
because in Singapore we use the simplified script.It’s too complicated to explain all these
to the confused/irritated waiter in Cantonese or Putonghua
so I usually go with har gow, siu mai, and char siu bao.Siu mei is not siu mai.
San fu (priest),
san fu (new pants),
san fu (uncomfortable/difficult).
“How I Impress Others with my Cantonese” is humorous. It pokes fun at my own inadequacies as a Singaporean Chinese speaker in Hong Kong. It has a neat ending, which brings home the point about Cantonese being a difficult language to master even for ethnic Chinese speakers. It also makes a larger statement about the heterogeneity of the Chinese linguistic and cultural experience.
“Choices”, relatively speaking, is neither here nor there. There are good things to be said about the poem. It is about attitudes and conversations. It is about spending time with a friend who was worried about losing his job, about being impatient, and about being indulgent with beer. It is about missed opportunities. The poem is stitched together as a patchwork of disparate memories to do with food. I like it because it is a patchwork in terms of how it is put together. Because it is a piece of patchwork, it is not meant to go anywhere. The poem is still good.
However, precisely because it doesn’t go anywhere, it lacks “oomph” compared to the other poem. It is not about one thing but many things. How does one direct a poem that on one level is about a sense of being directionless? It needs to be resolute, with a sense of direction and a destination.
It needs to be another poem altogether.
Choices [and Revisions]
[i wandered lonely as a cloud]
I remember spring onions
and a colleague from Hampshire
who was strictly vegetarian
till he came to Hong Kong
and smelled char siu and siu yuk on my rice.[april is the cruellest month]
I remember there were times
I can’t be bothered
and simply told the waiter
I’ll have what my son was having.I remember an all-day breakfast
on a Monday evening in an Irish pub
at Tsim Sha Tsui with a friend who’s
chasing the bacon, sausages
and potatoes around on his plate,
worried about his job at a bank.[the caged bird sings]
I remember at a generic mall in a generic restaurant
my impatience and sighs when my son, daughter,
wife, and mother-in-law took too long to decide,
whether to go à la carte or have shared dishes with rice,
and if it’s shared dishes whether to go with double-cooked pork
not too spicy with less salt or chicken with pine nuts
plus a vegetable dish or actually
there’s no need to have a vegetable dish
since the meat dishes come with vegetables
plus a few dim sum items or maybe
we should go à la carte after all,
with my son choosing wonton noodles,
my daughter wanting shredded chicken noodles
my wife saying she’ll have double-cooked pork
and chicken with pine nuts and a bowl of rice to share with me
and my mother-in-law wanting just a basket of siu long bao.[how do I love thee? let me count the ways]
I remember how we could never go wrong with food
in Hong Kong, till it was whispered that lunch
the other day was really an interview.[whose woods these are I think I know]
I remember a dinner with some Guinness
at that above-mentioned Irish pub
with a new colleague
who was trying to be polite.And an extra sneaky Guinness
and having to wait an hour before I leave
simply because there were hardworking policemen
pointing their speed guns on Friday evenings.[starry dynamo in the machinery of night]
I have decided to turn it into another poem by drawing out one particular meaning – the pointlessness of choices. I did this by using easily recognisable quotations from famous poems. The result is that the sardonic tone of the poem is further emphasised. This is a poem about a poet (or at least a well-read person) mocking himself.
The use of quotations in literary works is not new. T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” is a prominent example which uses quotations to make a statement about the exhaustion of European culture. Jorge Luis Borges took it further in “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, an ironic work of fiction masquerading as literary criticism.
The revised version of “Choices” uses quotations as scaffolding, each of which is a sardonic commentary on the preceding and/or subsequent memory fragment. Is the poem saying that there is no original sentiment, that every sentiment has already been expressed in one way or another? Or is the poem about the pretentiousness of the poet who subjugates his personal experience to the supposed wisdom of poetry?
In either case, the quotation becomes a relevant tangent, bringing about discordant moments, unsettling the persona’s self-satisfied disenchantment with people and the world around him.
