Review of SAMPLE AND LOOP

 "Similarly, the poem, for all its labour and craft, is merely one person's understanding of another, possibly misjudged, and one that arguably says more about the writer than the subject. And though this current of self-critique runs through the entire collection, this project of portraiture in verse (in which both interviewer and interviewee curate the details that are meant to present an entire life in short verse) seems too important for the poems to abandon. The subtitle of the collection, 'A Simple History of Singaporeans in America', speaks to this confident ambivalence. Together, the verse portraits form a history of a community, but they remain "simple" – snapshots of particular lives in a particular place. It is a documentary and poetic project with inherent limitations, but nonetheless worthwhile."

Thanks, Kristina Tom, for this perceptive review of SAMPLE AND LOOP: A SIMPLE HISTORY OF SINGAPOREANS IN AMERICA. And thanks, Yong Shu Hoong, for publishing it in the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. Read the whole review here.

If you're interested in getting the book, it's available in both Singapore and the US.

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