Poeticity

I picked up a few interesting books yesterday on a visit to the library, though whether I'll have time to do them justice in the next couple of weeks remains to be seen. I'm going to be very busy working on the play. I think I'll be able to read most of Alvin Pang's City of Rain. He's a Singaporean writer and this is his most recent book of poems (or at least I think it is, having come out in 2003.). He was a co-editor of No Other City an anthology of local poems with an urban theme that we use as one of the texts for the English A1 course for the International Baccalaureate, and I liked his poem Made Of Gold found there, and, as it turns out, in this collection. Familiarity with the anthology has bred respect in me, especially for the thoughtful editing. At first glance City of Rain has got quite a bit to recommend it. The poem adjacent to Made of Gold - No Sign Before - deals with the (real-life) suicide of a child and manages to find something sayable even on such dangerous ground.