Bite Harder: Open Letters and Close Readings

by Jee Leong Koh

Fifteen years ago, Koh Jee Leong left a promising career in Singapore’s Education Service in order to become a poet in New York City. The change was transformative. Bite Harder: Open Letters and Close Readings tells the story of the change through essays that blend the personal and the literary: unlikely friendships in graduate school and the Village; encounters with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the activism of gender rights advocate Pauline Park; reading Eavan Boland on the Upper West Side and reading Gregory Woods in Queens. These formative experiences are described alongside pioneering essays on Singapore poets, such as Goh Poh Seng, Cyril Wong, Yeow Kai Chai, and Justin Chin, and uncompromising letters about the struggle for freedom of expression. Koh’s unique perspective as both insider and outsider informs these essays and letters.

Bite Harder is a vital contribution to the nascent genre of literary essays and the field of cultural criticism in Singapore.

About the Author

Koh Jee Leong is the author of Steep Tea (Carcanet), named a Best Book of the Year by UK’s Financial Times and a Finalist by Lambda Literary in the USA. He has published three other books of poems and a book of zuihitsu, the last shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. His work has been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Malay, Vietnamese, Russian, and Latvian. Born and raised in Singapore, Koh now lives and works in New York City, where he heads the literary non-profit Singapore Unbound, dedicated to the struggle for freedom of expression and equal rights for all. Towards these ends, he organizes the biennial Singapore Literature Festival in NYC, edits SP blog, and publishes authors of Asian heritage, from Asia and America, under the imprint Gaudy Boy.

232 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2018

About the author

Jee Leong Koh is the author of Steep Tea (Carcanet), named a Best Book of the Year by UK's Financial Times and a Finalist by Lambda Literary in the USA. His hybrid work of fiction, Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an insignificant Japanese poet, won the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize in English fiction. He was also shortlisted for the prize for The Pillow Book (Math Paper Press/Awai Books) and Connor and Seal (Sibling Rivalry). His second Carcanet book, Inspector Inspector, was published in late 2022.

Koh's work has been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Malay, Vietnamese, Russian, and Latvian. Originally from Singapore, Koh lives in New York City, where he heads the literary non-profit Singapore Unbound, the indie press Gaudy Boy, and the journal of Asian writing and art SUSPECT.

Reviews

[Andrew H · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the close of his well-written book, The Death of the Critic, Ronan McDonald repeats a quote from the playwright Brendan Behan and the gist of this is that literary critics are eunuchs in the harem. McDonald regrets this point-of-view and the decline of criticism into a dark place, almost a grave, where it is seen as uncreative. Bite Harder Open Letters and Close Readings by Koh Jee Leong could almost be a reply to McDonald's book. It is not a book written by a eunuch: it is sexy, savvy, incisive, cultured, and ultimately creative.

Ethos Books have taken a leap into the dark with this book and their bold jump is a challenge to dreary criticism-- to the conservative tongue-in-cheek writing in Singapore that tows the governmental line and to the dull, polyglottal theories of reading that avoid authorship and close, textual reading. The twenty essays are collected into four sections, each building into a unity, and they fold around a central interview with the author about literature and identity. The Open Letters (in the second section) exemplify the humanity of this author and chew away at a Singapore that avoids equality. "It Stops the Heart" is a wonderful defence of the right to read freely. Literature is life and life is literature and criticism upholds moral values and moral values fail where an individual or nation slips away from fair judgement.

This is a deeply personal book, but it is not an egotistical book and this is where its strength lies. Though it grows out of an individual, it speaks for many and its force gathers from an Eastern awareness: the man/woman who would put the State in order must first put himself/herself in order. And for that to be done, the heart must be put in order. A reader must bite harder into flesh and spirit if reality is to be understood, to a point of Nietzchean wounding: criticism is not a soft act.

To bite harder could be interpreted as wanting to wound, but this is not at all what Koh's criticism is about-- it is about truth-telling and Koh is a knowledgeable, thoughtful, generous critic of poetry. He takes in Singaporean and USA and UK poetry with equal flair. His admiring essays on Cyril Wong and Justin Chin are fascinating in their range and depth. As are his balanced essays on Mann and Gregory Woods.

This book restores the word "creative" to criticism and also another one-- purposeful. It offers much to Queer Studies and to anyone who still believes that poetry is a vital, humanising influence in the world.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to write a review when one of the essays in the book your just read is about you. Beides that this books was great. At first it was hard to get into some of the essays because I was not familiar with some of the writers Koh wrote about. However, after reading them I read a book by Justin Chin, and jst received a pdf version of Cyril WOng's "Satoria Blues." All hardcopies, as he himself informed me via email are sold out!

I really enjoyed the essays Mothers, not Muses, Immeasureables (about Cyril Wong), Excuse me, are you a Singapore Poet (about Justin Chin), In Gay Terms: An Open Letter on the Occasion of the Sixth Pink Dot Rally, & On Being Chinese, A Conversation with Koh Jee Leong.

[Alessio]

A fine collection of essays. This makes me want to read Goh Poh Seng, R. Nemo Hill, and more of Cyril Wong. The Justin Chin essay was quite wonderful. In it, Koh declares, “we cannot be pragmatic in attacking the politics of pragmatism.” Right on.

[nur · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was my first time reading essays explaining various poems from the poets and it made me realise that there is a whole system involved in writing the stanzas with the double meanings as well as the linguistic features