What do you think?
Rate this book
A Field Guide to Supermarkets in Singapore
Winner of the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize for Poetry in English
A Field Guide to Supermarkets in Singapore is a 19th century reference book (on philology? art history? anthropology? nobody remembers) that fell into a tropical swamp and was rescued, then lovingly restored, by a nice lady in curlers.
Caked in organic matter too dense to scrub off, the pages of Samuel Lee's debut collection reveal visions and premonitions of a city filled with characters engaged in their own private sorrows, both minute and expansive. To read him is to be lost in the aisles of millennia.
A Field Guide to Supermarkets in Singapore is a 19th century reference book (on philology? art history? anthropology? nobody remembers) that fell into a tropical swamp and was rescued, then lovingly restored, by a nice lady in curlers.
Caked in organic matter too dense to scrub off, the pages of Samuel Lee's debut collection reveal visions and premonitions of a city filled with characters engaged in their own private sorrows, both minute and expansive. To read him is to be lost in the aisles of millennia.
61 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2016
2 people are currently reading
66 people want to read
About the author
Samuel Lee
236 books4 followersLibrarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 21, 2017
Curiosity level: Couldn't quite sink my teeth completely into it
•
"When the barrage burst and sank all the Malls, the first signs of the disaster to surface were the jelly handbags, which bobbed like water hyacinths resting below a cloud of dragonflies." - p.49 (Noah)
•
I admit, I chose this book for its cute and intriguing title and the geometric cover design. But I soon found that I couldn't submerge myself in for majority of the poems - felt they didn't evoke strong emotion or fire up much supermarket allusions or fruity thoughts... though much of what the author wrote stemmed from a deep and interesting understanding of classic literature mixed with philosophy.
•
I didn't feel the translation of the Singaporean heart and apart from "Rupture of Fruit Through a Plastic Bag". The title of the book was tantalising but it didn't quite match up to my expectations.
•
What I enjoyed: the novel idea of the gap-punctuated word art in "First World Grocery Shopping" and "Learning to Eavesdrop", whereby Lee writes seemingly random phrases as though you, reader, were walking along the aisles with him, shopping (for experiences instead of food).
•
My favourite of the lot is the eclectic "Noah", which is an allegory to the Christian purging of the modern shopping world, written in cute satire. I enjoyed Lee's creativity that continuously push the envelope of style and the plenty of in-between-the-lines wit found in the poems.
•
Suitable for: Poetry enthusiasts, those obsessed with fruit 🍉
•
"When the barrage burst and sank all the Malls, the first signs of the disaster to surface were the jelly handbags, which bobbed like water hyacinths resting below a cloud of dragonflies." - p.49 (Noah)
•
I admit, I chose this book for its cute and intriguing title and the geometric cover design. But I soon found that I couldn't submerge myself in for majority of the poems - felt they didn't evoke strong emotion or fire up much supermarket allusions or fruity thoughts... though much of what the author wrote stemmed from a deep and interesting understanding of classic literature mixed with philosophy.
•
I didn't feel the translation of the Singaporean heart and apart from "Rupture of Fruit Through a Plastic Bag". The title of the book was tantalising but it didn't quite match up to my expectations.
•
What I enjoyed: the novel idea of the gap-punctuated word art in "First World Grocery Shopping" and "Learning to Eavesdrop", whereby Lee writes seemingly random phrases as though you, reader, were walking along the aisles with him, shopping (for experiences instead of food).
•
My favourite of the lot is the eclectic "Noah", which is an allegory to the Christian purging of the modern shopping world, written in cute satire. I enjoyed Lee's creativity that continuously push the envelope of style and the plenty of in-between-the-lines wit found in the poems.
•
Suitable for: Poetry enthusiasts, those obsessed with fruit 🍉
May 18, 2020
Visiting the supermarket has always been a therapeutic experience in itself, and now with this text, one will undoubtedly be swept back to the stories in these poems, as if tasting the encounter with a supermarket afresh, appreciating the flavours it brings, be it sadness, loss, joy or victory.
And definitely one of the more structured poetry anthologies I've seen in a while, not completely morose like most singlit books are.
Excited to read the rest of the fantastic Ten Year Series by the Math Paper Press.
And definitely one of the more structured poetry anthologies I've seen in a while, not completely morose like most singlit books are.
Excited to read the rest of the fantastic Ten Year Series by the Math Paper Press.
November 23, 2016
Something new.
October 31, 2019
Beautiful poems about magical moments in everyday life
Read
September 5, 2021“… the cold metallic shock
of water in a shaded pool, galvanizing all the pores” (Arthur Yap, “tropical paradise”)
“and my own eyes glossing over the heart of the animal,
the sweetness of its body running, like water, over the metal” (Samuel Lee, “Still, Life”)
The Tristan chord of cold metal amidst shopping abundance; the glocal dissonance, triggered inevitably by a human encounter, that disrupts the imagined seamlessness of supply chains — these are acute sensations dissected in this collection.
I’d consider this wry, furtive, haute faggotry—insistent on and comfortable in pedantry (“There is a word for it”), with a touch of the bureaucratic, but always lyrical, occasionally comic. Nothing is, or allowed to be, ugly. It professes a deep faith in the radiating significance of concrete nouns like “spelt” or “Carolina Herrera.” For Lee, I think, supermarket aisles, like taxonomies, are romances, or promises, emptied at the point of their fulfillment:
I appreciate the coherence of this book, bagged nicely and arranged with thought. See for instance the obsession with mechanics in Part II. And there are some potent lines scattered throughout, worthy of re-reads down the road.
Favorites include: “Still, life,” “Rupture of Fruit Through a Plastic Bag,” “Poem Machines,” “Advice.”
of water in a shaded pool, galvanizing all the pores” (Arthur Yap, “tropical paradise”)
“and my own eyes glossing over the heart of the animal,
the sweetness of its body running, like water, over the metal” (Samuel Lee, “Still, Life”)
The Tristan chord of cold metal amidst shopping abundance; the glocal dissonance, triggered inevitably by a human encounter, that disrupts the imagined seamlessness of supply chains — these are acute sensations dissected in this collection.
I’d consider this wry, furtive, haute faggotry—insistent on and comfortable in pedantry (“There is a word for it”), with a touch of the bureaucratic, but always lyrical, occasionally comic. Nothing is, or allowed to be, ugly. It professes a deep faith in the radiating significance of concrete nouns like “spelt” or “Carolina Herrera.” For Lee, I think, supermarket aisles, like taxonomies, are romances, or promises, emptied at the point of their fulfillment:
We pronounce the names of things
vainly anticipating the slightest possibility
that we can slide our fingers down their contours,
Understand their shape, manage desire.
We fill them with desecration, colouring them,
making them whole. (“Ideology”)
I appreciate the coherence of this book, bagged nicely and arranged with thought. See for instance the obsession with mechanics in Part II. And there are some potent lines scattered throughout, worthy of re-reads down the road.
Favorites include: “Still, life,” “Rupture of Fruit Through a Plastic Bag,” “Poem Machines,” “Advice.”
October 15, 2017
Cheapskately, I grabbed an iced latte to help this book (which was found in NUS U-Town's bookstore; and which I had no intentions of buying) go down, and sat down in a corner of the connecting Butter My Buns cafe. With a healthy dose of pop music and Spotify ads overhead I sipped at the coffee and the book. How appropriate that the Ivesian polytonality of background noise and A Field Guide to Supermarkets in Singapore were married on my first reading.
Lee presents familiar objects from the middle class vocabulary — Ikea furniture, scented candles, US-flown produce — and forces them to be vorhanden, into our field of vision and into jamais vu. He achieves this with metaphorical conceits, tugging at mimesis to reveal the frayed edges of everyday life in Singapore.
In the first part Lee reveals glints and facets of the supermarket/mall/Commodity Assemblage Space, filtered through kelp, mud, and an Ashbery-like languor. Yet, in the remainder, he trails off, only returning to the titular motif in fragments. I found that the collection was less of a field guide than a prolegomena, and the overall force of the underlying theme of excess and urbanity was damped as a consequence.
Unlike Tyler Durden, there is no rage against the machine; no resolution to the dissonant chords of ennui or decadence, just passivity and the recognition that all will fade in time. For many Singaporean students annually, their GCE exams come to a close with a similar sense of ambiguity about possible futures and career paths. Likewise, this collection was a fitting (in)conclusion to (my reading) of the Ten Year Series.
[Review #1 - 11/10/17.]
Lee presents familiar objects from the middle class vocabulary — Ikea furniture, scented candles, US-flown produce — and forces them to be vorhanden, into our field of vision and into jamais vu. He achieves this with metaphorical conceits, tugging at mimesis to reveal the frayed edges of everyday life in Singapore.
In the first part Lee reveals glints and facets of the supermarket/mall/Commodity Assemblage Space, filtered through kelp, mud, and an Ashbery-like languor. Yet, in the remainder, he trails off, only returning to the titular motif in fragments. I found that the collection was less of a field guide than a prolegomena, and the overall force of the underlying theme of excess and urbanity was damped as a consequence.
Unlike Tyler Durden, there is no rage against the machine; no resolution to the dissonant chords of ennui or decadence, just passivity and the recognition that all will fade in time. For many Singaporean students annually, their GCE exams come to a close with a similar sense of ambiguity about possible futures and career paths. Likewise, this collection was a fitting (in)conclusion to (my reading) of the Ten Year Series.
[Review #1 - 11/10/17.]
May 11, 2021
Quarantine book #7
What a treat! In a book full of Californian oranges rolling down rickety recklessly-driven local busses, we see a Singapore of contrasts.
I particularly enjoyed the jabs of "First World Grocery Shopping". It certainly puts our everyday luxuries into perspective, more poignantly to a country like Singapore that developed at light speed. Still, life. ;)
A well-crafted volume, the result of #MathPaperPress 's "Ten Year Series", which seeks to apply Singapore-style structural discipline to the making of a poetry manuscript.
This edition is by @booksactually 's Math Paper Press
More #SingLit in #onebookSingapore
#onebookAsia
#QuarantineReading
What a treat! In a book full of Californian oranges rolling down rickety recklessly-driven local busses, we see a Singapore of contrasts.
I particularly enjoyed the jabs of "First World Grocery Shopping". It certainly puts our everyday luxuries into perspective, more poignantly to a country like Singapore that developed at light speed. Still, life. ;)
A well-crafted volume, the result of #MathPaperPress 's "Ten Year Series", which seeks to apply Singapore-style structural discipline to the making of a poetry manuscript.
This edition is by @booksactually 's Math Paper Press
More #SingLit in #onebookSingapore
#onebookAsia
#QuarantineReading
February 1, 2024
too deep for me to understand. i expected a lot of ntuc or sheng shiong references but i got none.
i liked 'arguments.' the first one
i liked 'arguments.' the first one
April 16, 2020
A Field Guide to Supermarkets in Singapore is a debut poetry book by local poet Samuel Lee. I was attracted to this book because of its intriguing title and cover design, and decided to pick it up for a leisure read.
Winner of the Singapore Literature Prize 2018 for English Poetry, this is a book containing poems that are somewhat related to supermarkets and food (as you can probably tell from its title). Lee also creatively infuses subjects like art and history into his poems, distancing them from the book’s very practical title. I shall not venture to explain more because it is really hard to review poetry books and it can be very subjective. But if you’re looking for some Singaporean poetry, this is a good book to start!
P.S. I don’t think I’ll give ratings for poetry books!
Winner of the Singapore Literature Prize 2018 for English Poetry, this is a book containing poems that are somewhat related to supermarkets and food (as you can probably tell from its title). Lee also creatively infuses subjects like art and history into his poems, distancing them from the book’s very practical title. I shall not venture to explain more because it is really hard to review poetry books and it can be very subjective. But if you’re looking for some Singaporean poetry, this is a good book to start!
P.S. I don’t think I’ll give ratings for poetry books!
May 28, 2020
A Field Guide to Supermarkets in Singapore is a debut poetry book by local poet Samuel Lee, which won the Singapore Literature Prize 2018 for English Poetry.
The book consists of a collection of poems that creatively explore topics such as art, history and places, not forgetting supermarkets (as stated in the title of the book).
Though not all the poems struck a chord with me, I really enjoyed reading some of them. Due to the subjective nature of poems, it is hard for me to give a comprehensive review of this book. I can only say that if you enjoy reading Singaporean poetry, this is a book that you might want to read!
The book consists of a collection of poems that creatively explore topics such as art, history and places, not forgetting supermarkets (as stated in the title of the book).
Though not all the poems struck a chord with me, I really enjoyed reading some of them. Due to the subjective nature of poems, it is hard for me to give a comprehensive review of this book. I can only say that if you enjoy reading Singaporean poetry, this is a book that you might want to read!
January 22, 2022
Not a book for everyone, especially in our literal-minded Singaporean reading scene. A daring, artistic, charming book of poems that is filled with memorable images and surprising emotions; traipsing down the aisles of the Singaporean supermarket can never be experienced in the same way again.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews