Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here .  My father died five years ago. Yesterday was his death anniversary. Five years seems wrong. It feels both too long and too short. In this state of unmooring, one becomes time's orphan, just as moving from Singapore to New York made me an orphan of place. I have lived in New York as a foster child for 20 years. 20 years seems wrong too, for the same reason. Yesterday I tried to recall the exact day I landed in JFK airport and took the bus to Grand Central Station, in order to board the train to Sarah Lawrence College, where I was to learn how to write, but I could not remember. What I remembered was sitting across from an older Jewish man on the train. He told me he was a jeweler who opened his own shop. Tonight, 20 years after I came to this city to see if I would be any good as a poet, I am having dinner with a younger Singaporean poet and her mom. She is here to pursue further training in the craft of wri...

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . I'm buried, overloaded, drowning in work, but how could I turn down an invitation by a fellow Singaporean to try some cheap and good Chinese food in a place that I knew nothing about?  Spicy Village  is an unassuming establishment on Forsyth Street, in Manhattan's Chinatown, whose claim to fame is its da pan ji, or "spicy big tray chicken," a dish from Xinjiang. I did not do my research beforehand, so I did not know about the chef's specialty. Instead, I had soup dumplings (delicious but small), spicy beef brisket hui mei, or handpulled wide noodle (chewy good), and fish balls stuffed with pork (yummy), as my friend and I chatted about the various business scandals that had broken out in Singapore, about  FICA , about Singaporeans in NYC doing this and that, and about the trials of New York real estate. As the evening went on, I was feeling strangely revived in that tiny, five-table restau...

Column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . A friend and fellow poet, Miriam Stanley, attended Sunday's march against antisemitism in NYC. Afterwards, she posted on Facebook what she saw of some marchers' harassment of a man holding a sign calling Trump "racist in the White House." According to Miriam, "People were screaming at him. They cursed him. They physically invaded his space trying to scare him." When she tried to protect him, she was cursed at and physically harassed too. One woman said, "why don't you join the Moslems?" On the march, a man joined Miriam in protecting the anti-Trump protester, but other marchers continued their harassment. Miriam: "Some asked why he was holding the sign. He explained about Charlottesville and Trump saying there were good people on "both sides". The man explained how the shooter of the Pittsburg shul was a white supremacist. I also said the same things to the m...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . I was going to write about the neighborhood petition I saw in the East Village on Sunday. A public park is to be renovated and, as part of its renovation, its twelve-foot fence will be lowered to four feet. Residents of the gentrified village are petitioning for the fence to remain twelve-foot high to keep "the park safe for children." I never thought I would see Trump's wall at the heart of supposedly liberal New York. I was going to write about an on-line petition posted by the homophobic Facebook group Singaporeans Defending Marriage and Family. A school has adopted Mark Haddon's award-winning novel A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time for supplementary reading. The haters want the book banned for its "foul and blasphemous language." Unable to appreciate the book's sensitive depiction of a 15-year-old boy with Asperger's Syndrome, the book burners are the tr...

Had a really special afternoon with the daughters of my late junior-college English teacher Keith Wiltshire. It was lovely to meet Grace and Christine finally, and Grace's husband Pete. After torte, tea, and wine at Cafe Sabarsky, we walked over to Shepherd Gallery, where Christine's husband, Lin, an artist, works. We were given a little tour of the current show by the owners. Then more drinks--gin and tonic--and conversation. We miss you, Keith.

Last night BV and I attended a talk at Jefferson Market Library to commemorate the upcoming 50th anniversary of an early instance of gay activism in New York City. "Fifty years ago a person could be refused service in a bar simply for being gay, and his or her mere presence there could result in the bar’s closure by the State Liquor Authority. On April 21, 1966, Dick Leitsch and other members of the Mattachine Society, an early LGBT rights organization, staged the now famous Sip-In at Julius’ bar in the Village to challenge this “legal” discrimination. After they announced to the bartender that they were homosexuals and wished to be served, they were refused service. The event generated publicity and was one of the earliest acts of organized LGBT civil disobedience in New York City. Scholars of LGBT history consider the Sip-In at Julius’ as a key event leading to the growth of legitimate LGBT bars and the development of the bar as the central social space for urban LGBT New York...

The library was a long way away from Manhattan. It was near the 169th Street stop on the F line. That made it further than the train stop for JFK airport. Still, I was curious to see that part of Queens, and it was very nice of Micah Eaton Zevin to invite me to read. When I walked through the front doors, the library looked like any other library. Then I took an elevator down to the basement and entered a maze of hallways looking forbiddingly institutional. When I finally entered the lecture hall, there were only a few souls there. When the open mic began, there were about 12 people scattered in the very large hall. Two young African American girls had wandered into the reading. Perhaps one of them did not wander but made it look as if she did. She signed up for the open-mic. Her friend, dressed like a boy, did not know what to make of the gathering. She told Micah that she did not like reading. When it was Girl One's turn to read, she read a sweet little poem for her tomboy compan...

The Roger Smith Annual Poetry Dinner is held at the Roger Smith Hotel in Midtown East in the spirit of Scottish-American cultural exchange and in honor of a Scottish poet. The poet is usually returning from the Poetry Festival in Nicaragua, as I learned last night from the honored poet Gerrie Fellows. After the opening remarks by organizer Danika Druttman, Gerrie began the dinner by reading her lovely poems. The phrase "the grit and oil of matter" stayed with me. As the dinner continued, every guest read a poem he or she brought. It was to be expected that the Scottish connection would be strong. One of the best poems of the evening was a witty parody of a Scottish ballad. More surprising was the international flavor of the evening. Two poets of Indian heritage read, as well as a woman from Mexico and a man from Peru, the latter two reading in Spanish. There was also a poet of African heritage; she did not say what part of Africa. Sitting across from me, as I discovered lat...

On Thursday night, I read from Steep Tea for The Inspired Word at Parkside Lounge, NYC. Thanks, Michael Geffner, for asking me to read and for taking these wonderful photos!

On Sunday, I trotted along to Marc Straus Gallery for the opening reception for Jong Oh's show. The Korean artist creates sculptures that plays off the space and light of a site. "Tenuous strings and shards of Plexiglas are pulled into form by small stones or metal pendulums tied almost invisibly to the 21-foot high ceiling," as the gallery website puts it. The sculptures were mostly boxy, either backed by a wall or hanging freely in space. Most impressive was the last work. Two rectangles made of string are suspended one on top of the other. Due to their subtly shaded coloration, they looked like pieces of glass. Walking under them gave me a terrifically uneasy feeling. The show was curated by gallery director Ken Tan. * On Monday, GH and I went to the Asia Society to hear architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien speak about their building of Asia Society Hong Kong. They transformed the Former Explosives Magazine Compound into a gleaming modern center for arts and c...

Thanks, everyone, for celebrating my new book "Steep Tea" with me last night at Book Culture. The trains were acting up, the night was cold, but you came, some traveling for more than an hour, at least one person whom I know of walking 24 UWS blocks because of Sabbath. Your presence made the event special. Thank you, Cody and the team at Book Culture, for hosting the launch. A big thank-you to Simpson from Chomp Chomp for sponsoring the delicious reception. Thank you, Doug and Chris, for bringing the food to the reading. Thank you, Raj, for the Tiger Beer sponsorship. And thank you, Meiko, for helping with the reception. It was wonderful to hear Cindy Arrieu-King again. Thank you, Cindy, for coming in from Philly to read with me. Your poems are beautiful and brave. They confront the horrors of our contemporary world, not in some far-off war-torn country, but right here among our daily struggles. Softness, you remind us, is a form of kindness. Your soft touch is born of grea...

After years of refurbishment, the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum opens its doors to the public, but its garden is still a churn of red soil. No lilacs bloom in the ever-returning spring for Abe’s black pall

the lavish slant of a himalayan pine solicits the eye

Heard István Várdai play Bach's Cello Suites 1, 5 and 6 last night at Armory Park Avenue. Impeccable technique and dynamic shading. I thought that he lost the plot in some middle sections of all the suites. Suite 5 was especially moving. The experimental Sarabande--I want to hear it again. The performance took place in the recently refurbished Board of Officers Room. A stunning salon. Wine was served during intermission. The ticket cost only $25. A steal. damp clothes in a crowded bus late spring

The Downtown Fair was better than I had expected. I especially liked the paintings of Sheba Sharrow, and the photographs of Eric Forstmann and Julie Blackmon. Too many boring color field paintings and pop nothings. a sandpiper miles from the ocean or a sparrow?

The last three weekends were busy ones. S and R drove up from D.C. to stay with us overnight on September 29. We went up to the roof of the Met and enjoyed the glittering autumnal view there. Then we had a very nice dinner at le Paris , which I strongly recommend. Columbus Day weekend began on Friday with drinks with DW. We hadn't seen each other for a long time, and the time at Suite Bar passed very pleasantly, so pleasantly that we both wondered afterwards why we were not meeting more often. Then on Saturday, dinner with P and J at Spring Natural Kitchen on the UWS because J wanted to try its organic cooking. Dinner was a success. It was so easy to be with them, so relaxing.  On Sunday G and I went to Philly for the day. We both loved the new Barnes Foundation building, designed by Tod Williams. I was mesmerized by the Matisse dance mural but liked "The Joy of Life" much less than I thought I would. I had the unwanted feeling that the Picasso works in the coll...

Quiet, please— the beach is turning over to sleep, drawing up to its shoulders the slipping blanket of the sea. The old Ferris wheel is slowing to a final stop, its wooden cars empty. The stands are closing. On the pier, extended like a promise, the lines are reeled back to their hollow round casings. The patrol boat is circling an invisible crater xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx as if a man is drowning.

GH and I wanted to see Richard Serra's new works at the Gagosian Gallery, and so took in other galleries on a pleasant, if drizzly, Saturday afternoon. At the Magnanmetz Gallery, Colombian artist Miler Lagos built an igloo out of books from a defunct US Navy base library. The old index cards papered a nearby corner. On the other end of the gallery, his video Water House  (2011) showed a water tank floating on water. It keeps water out instead of water in, and so becomes a kind of ark. At George Billis, American artist Adam Normandin showed photorealistic paintings of freight trains. I like the idea of reproducing spray-painted graffiti on uneven metal sidings with oil paint on a flat canvas. Affirmation was particularly compelling an image. Another artist, British Paul Winstanley, at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, painted from photographs, mostly his own. Showing people alone in public spaces, the soft-focused works seemed to meditate on people meditating in a moment snatched from t...

Visited the BMW Guggenheim Lab at Houston and Second Avenue today. The disused lot, wedged between two apartment buildings, is now occupied by a mobile structure that hosts community discussions, lectures and film screenings. It is designed by Tokyo architecture film Atelier Bow-Wow as "a traveling toolbox." On its website, the project is billed as a mobile laboratory traveling to nine major cities worldwide over six years. Led by international, interdisciplinary teams of emerging talents in the areas of urbanism, architecture, art, design, science, technology, education, and sustainability, the Lab addresses issues of contemporary urban life through programs and public discourse. Its goal is the exploration of new ideas, experimentation, and ultimately the creation of forward-thinking solutions for city life. On a bulletin board, titled "Legacy of the Lab," at the actual site, was a list of bullet points that seemed to be a summary of a round-table discussion ...

Read at Poets House for the launch of Tribes 13 yesterday. It was a day of record heat, but cool in the Battery Park home for poetry. The circular exhibition room showed some interesting first editions and letters, by Robert Duncan, Pound, Ginsberg, H.D., among others. No Asian American poets there. No Asian American poets too up on the wall in the quiet reading room. The narrative of American poetry, even in a liberal and progressive space, does not include them. For the first time I felt the enormity of the challenge of becoming a part of American poetry. Okka said hi in the exhibition room. She had heard of me from a Singaporean poet friend, and was visiting Poets House when she read my name on a flyer advertising the Tribes reading. An Indonesian, she has been writing since young, and will be taking up a writing residency at the Vermont Art Studio next month. We sat together for the reading. The turnout was very good. There must have been close to 100 people there. I read "T...