I must confess that I came upon ‘Recovery’ by accident while passing the time in class (Guiltily, I might add.), while flipping through our text, “Writing Singapore: An Historical Anthology of Singapore Literature”. While people around me discussed the complexities of a play’s composition, I suddenly found myself drawn into this simple, yet absorbing poem.
Recovery
Forgetting you, in loving someone else,
Is no less painful than the pressing wounds;
When she loves someone else, the many hells
I go through seem to know no bounds.
It is part soul, part instinct after all,
To draw the utmost pain into a trap
And sterilize the wounds with alcohol.
None of this owes to mishap.
You broke my heart so badly that the only
Way I can recover is to let
Somebody else break it some more, so lonely
Fragments are bound to none in debt:
Grind it into dust and blinding grit
(And wash away the purple stains with bleach)
So I might shape a something out of it:
An apple perhaps, or a peach.
Effectiveness at delivering its message and success at maintaining a level of emotional engagement is what I look for in poetry. ‘Recovery’ by Toh Hsien Min did just that. It was simple, engaging and touching all at the same time. It drew me in enough to compel me to explore even more of Hsien Min’s works.
In light of this being merely a blog post and not a full blown essay (or is it?) I shall attempt to keep it brief. Here are the 3 main points that I liked most about Hsien Min’s ‘Recovery’:
1. Intense pain is portrayed through simplicity of poem, in language and in form.
Hsien Min’s poem is not complicated nor is it hard to comprehend. Its form is simple with 4 lines in 4 stanzas and alternate rhyme that create a rhythm that carry the reader even more smoothly through the poem.
Its language mirrors the simplicity of its form. Ingenious is Hsien Min’s use of theme in his language to make the poem even more cohesive. The metaphorical meaning of ‘wounds’ is linked to its literal meaning and which the process of healing is described in practical medical terms. For example, ‘sterilize the wounds with alcohol’ and ‘purple stains with bleach’, are images that refer to actual medicinal practices that are applied to physical wounds. Such a theme of “medical” terms intensifies the notion of pain portrayed in the poem. While the reader might find it hard to relate or identify the emotional pain described by the persona, when linked to physical pain, the reader might be able to imagine at least some level of pain that the poem is trying to convey. The use of the theme is thus effective in conveying the important notion of pain through the poem.
2. The poem is almost existential in reflecting the human’s ability to hurt and to heal.
The subject of the poem focuses on the process of healing and ‘recovery’ after going through a heartbreak or losing somebody you care about. Hurting, then healing is a natural process of life and this is reiterated in the poem in which the pain is described to be ‘part soul’ and ‘part instinct’. Such a relation suggests such a process is innate because the soul and instinct comes from within and not caused by any external factors such as circumstance or chance and ‘mishap’.
I find it an existential concept because here, we examine the natural process of man’s existence, in which he is required to experience pain and healing. Through this poem we see the process in which one copes with the pain that comes with existence. The topics of ‘soul’ and chance that can take the form of ‘mishap(s)’ are existential concepts on their own. The ‘soul’ brings into question man’s sense of being, whereas the concept of chance questions man’s sense of being as well as the question of fate.
I say “almost” because while the persona touches on such philosophical ideas, the focus of the poem still focuses on the process of healing on the more superficial level.
3. The image of the heart, represented by apropos imagery that reflect the heart as it goes through the recovery process.
In the final stanza, I found truly beautiful, the change in imagery representing the broken heart that was going through the ‘recovery’ process. After the hurt, the ‘fragments’ of the broken heart is symbolized by ‘dust’ and ‘grit’. These images are dirty and reflect the negativity and pain of a heart broken. Out of the pain and darkness though, the image turn into ones of hope when the heart is represented by the images of an ‘apple’ and a ‘peach’. These fruits represent new life and hope as if the persona wanted to ‘shape’ his future into something sweeter and happier like the fruits.
I admire Hsien Min’s ability to seamlessly convey such intense emotions through the use of simple and uncomplicated means in his art form. I hope other readers can also enjoy his writing, as I was able to. While this poem found me by chance, it led me to discover even more of Hsien Min’s works which I also hope other readers will try to read because I have found his work thoroughly enjoyable.
Min, T. H. (2009). Recovery. In P. H.-l. Angelia Poon, Writing Singapore: An Historical Anthology of Singapore Literature (p. 590). NUS Press.
