Unmarked Treasure: Poems

by Cyril Wong

A ghost steps out of its body after a suicide and looks back at it in wonder. The poet wonders at his own existence and struggles between actual living and the desire to die.

"Cyril Wong continues to explore the nuances of relationships, in language that is lyrical, beautifully crafted, and erotically charged. There are several fine love poems that reach out to embrace a common humanity. Wong swims into the undercurrents of family tensions, hidden desires, and the meaning of a self... as well as questioning our understanding of both life and death."
- Rebecca Edwards, author of Scar Country and Holiday Coast Medusa

"Reading Cyril Wong is always to encounter risk, the painful suturing of art and life, trials of faith and baptisms of fire. I have only the deepest respect for someone who has razed the walls between the private and the public, and in doing so, carved more space for all of us."
- Alfian Sa'at, author of One Fierce Hour and A History of Amnesia

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Cyril Wong is a two-time Singapore Literature Prize-winning poet and the recipient of the Singapore National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award for Literature. His books include poetry collections Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light (2007) and The Lover’s Inventory (2015), novels The Last Lesson of Mrs de Souza (2013) and This Side of Heaven (2020), and fiction collection Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me (2014). He completed his doctoral degree in English Literature at the National University of Singapore in 2012. His works have been featured in the Norton anthology, Language for a New Century, in Chinese Erotic Poems by Everyman’s Library, and in magazines and journals around the world. His writings have been translated into Turkish, German, Italian, French, Portuguese and Japanese.

Reviews

[Andrew H · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his poem "Arrival" in Below: Absence Cyril Wong writes:

"love is...... simply that "X:
which marks the point of arrival

upon the very treasure map of you."

Unmarked Treasure takes that as its starting point, but turns it inside outside, for this is a volume that searches for what is hard to to find, those precious truths that are well hidden inside the self: those qualities that are valid but not marked by an "X".

The framework for this volume is intriguing, a ghost returns (after a suicide) to reflect on life. The resultant poems are haunting-- elegiac, and here is another twist for the poems are elegies not for the dead but spoken by the dead. A voice that is dead, yet alive, muses on lives that are dead; on how people carry the dead inside themselves and struggle to move on. Cyril Wong is frequently described as a Confessional poet. I do worry about that term, however, for he is different in many ways. The voices that mark Confessionalism, Lowell, Plath, Olds, though they confess natural griefs can be artificial in the extreme. The poetry in Unmarked Treasure avoids these excesses and is marked instead by a lilting voice that is tense: Cyril Wong's free verse is timed to perfection. In this collection, mother, father, sister, grandmother, friends, lovers, all float through to be analysed and
felt, always felt. "Religion" is one of the finest love lyrics written. "Between Them" left me appropriately silent and holding my breath.

[Hao Guang Tse · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading this I felt that I got a better sense of Cyril's maturation as a writer. As friends have pointed out, the confessional mode makes the persona's (and more often than not, the poet's) biography front and centre of the work, and most are prepared to overlook much else in the name of overflowing emotions as a result. Having read and loved Oneiros, this only goes to show that Cyril has been pushing the limits of his craft successfully.

Here Cyril seems to be gingerly stepping out of the transcendent signifier of himself, trying on personas for size. Yet the theme of suicide and death, so embedded in his work, reveals the constraints of his technique: there is less meditation upon what death is and means, and much more hinges upon the persona's reactions when confronted with thoughts of death or suicide. The writing is ethereal and lean, but soon becomes repetitive. Surely language can do more than this?

[Insin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book without hesitation after a three-hour writing workshop facilitated by Cyril Wong - his charisma sure is potent.

Reading the synopsis didn't excite me; it made it seem like the book was centered around the ghost, when the book proves otherwise.

The poems were good in their simplicity of language and evocative imagery. Some spoke to me more than others did. I couldn't much appreciate the series of 'invisible snapshots'; on the other hand those narrated from his mother's perspective were very memorable.

The book was a hit-and-miss for me till it culminated in 'unmarked treasure'. That poem moved me to stillness; I had to savor it countless times over till I flipped the page. It's a winner, and for it this book gets five stars.

[Julie Koh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a moving book that should be read as more "gestalt" (more than the sum of its parts) than simply a sequence of individual poems. A "movie" of intersecting scenes merging with a "gallery" of mental pictures (sometimes inspired by actual photography) that deals poignantly with love, family, and the mysteries of our mortality.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

cyril wong writes for his mother, of his mother, and of some if not many singaporean mothers and parents who wish so much for their children... but are constantly fearful that we will fail or rebel or turn to the ways which are "wrong, because it is wrong".

[yamiyoghurt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of poems that explores longing, loneliness, and lost loves. Any longer and I might not be able to climb out of the melancholy.

[Beatrixe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love so many poems from this collection! Many uncanny observations of relationships that felt so spot on. :')

[Remy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully haphazard, lustful, neither harsh or forgiving in language and metaphor.

[Teo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guess one thing this collection gave me, was the acute appreciation of the subjective nature of poetry - although Cyril Wong is primarily a confessional poet many of his poems didn't strike me as deeply as I thought they would have. Probably not because of his skill though, but more of the fact that some experiences appeal to some readers more than others.

Reading this collection gave me some sort of woolly feeling, the same kind I get from reading a lot of modern/contemporary poetry, when something sounds nice reads well looks pretty but doesn't arouse any strong emotion in me. But one thing I really appreciate about his writing is that he doesn't use overly-pretentious metaphors that many modern poets are prone to using.

Some of my faves (poems that really touched me for whatever reason): letter to araya rasdjarmrearnsook and unmarked treasures (title poem whoop whoop).

This book happens to be (embarrassingly) one of my first forays into local literature. I look forward to digging deeper into this community!

[June · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raw, wistful, intimate, melancholic. Of endless longings..
At a loss for words.

-

Mother Doesn't Get It
"I don't know why the self is a shadow I keep trying to pin down to point in one direction.
I don't know why this home is where my heart is no longer.
I don't know why my body shrinks with age but my loneliness never does."

-

Almost
"So why is it that whenever I am most content
something gives way within me to open up
another vault of longing, my heart like one huge
Russian doll encasing another then followed
by another, loneliness like a live, trapped
insect vibrating within its innermost chamber,
refusing to be ignored or forgotten?"

-

Unmarked Treasure
"Too many years would pass
before I appreciate how it is
not a cause for sadness when
no one sees me as clearly
or better than I believe
I do, when what is not known
is precisely that which shapes
our capacity to know."

[Mirvan. Ereon]

I got my own copy from my beloved friend Cyril Wong himself. =P

Reading it now and I will be reviewing it soon!

[a · Rating 4 out of 5]

i devoured this in one sitting; i only wish i'd read it earlier back when i was 15 or 16. and!!! i adored the arrangement of the poems very much.

[Sara Watson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wong’s strongest poems explore the thoughts and voice of the mother.