The Importance Of Poetry In Singapore's Poetry

Poetry has been the soul of Singapore’s literature since 1830 because most of the published works of Singapore writing in English have been in poetry. Singapore’s poetry is playing its role in developing the state literature after few years of independence. The most notable poets in Singapore such as Edwin Thumboo, Rober Yeo, Arthur Yap and Lee Tzu Pheng have made Singapore aware on the prominent of literature in reaching peaked intellectual culture. In the 1990, this first generation of poets later helped to produce another generation of poets such as Angeline Yap, Leong Liew Geok and Heng Siok Tian. As time progresses, local publications started emerging to promote the movement of the new poets. The advancement of poetry have led later generation of poets such as Alvin Pang, Cyril Wong, Alfian Bin Sa’at and so on have taking poetry into the next level. Some of the main focuses of these poets are concerning the society, cultural

In the first line, he quoted two lines of the poem based on a book entitled “The Hatred of Poetry” written by Ben Lerner. He quoted the line Everybody can write a poem from the book because he criticizes the Ben Lerner’s idea that everyone can be a poet and all you need is a pen and a piece paper. However, Wong agrees Lerner’s view of writing a poetry that in order to craft a meaningful poem, the poet must write using his deepest emotion because this is what makes every poet different from each other. Besides, Wong emphasizes that most of the Western poet belittle him as a lower class poet. The line Maybe because I’m not American makes Wong that he is not popular as other mainstream American poets such as Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and to name a few. Wong did not deny the criticism which he is not a Universalist poet but he stresses the point that even if he wrote a poem for other people, his poem is more meaningful only to