"atelophobia", Jonathan Chan
after Hieu Minh Nguyen
fear of imperfection
that was the year he started
walking in fear, feeling shame
lodged like a plank, or a pickaxe,
conspicuous, clumped in the
brain, the weight of God in
the arched two backs of sacred
and profane. he was not afraid
of standing on a stage, or
reading a verse, or laying one
foot before the other in front
of traffic. terror swept in the
cradle of darkness, the fear
of never catching a glance,
the fear of pretense crumbling
to ash, brushing the dust of sagely
presence, of failure as a friend,
a son. the bright sorrow is always
ringing, always ringing, and fading
into forgetting
Author’s Note: This poem was originally published in Fare Forward.
/ Jonathan Chan is a writer and editor. He was born in New York to Malaysian and South Korean parents, raised in Singapore, and educated at Cambridge and Yale. Read more at jonbcy.wordpress.com.
/ COMMENTARY
“Long, run-on sentences close in on the reader like a vice, hammering home the poet’s obsessive fears. Through images both violent (“shame / lodged like a plank, or a pickaxe”) and tender (“the / cradle of darkness,” “brushing the dust”), Jonathan paints a vivid picture of how it feels to be afraid of imperfection. At the same time, the poem’s strongest moments are at its most vulnerable, when it breaks away from imagery to state the truth, plain and simple: “he was not afraid / of standing on a stage, or / reading a verse, or laying one / foot before the other in front / of traffic,” “the fear / of never catching a glance,” and “failure as a friend, / a son.” ”
/ Q&A
How has writing for SingPoWriMo impacted you as a poet?
SingPoWriMo helped to instil discipline in me as a writer and poet, given that I've completed several SingPoWriMos fully since I began in 2015. While not all of the poems I wrote for SPWM are necessarily ones I'm proud of, especially when I felt constrained by prompts to respond in ways that emphasised novelty or cleverness, others eventually evolved and helped shape and distil the concerns of my work today. For that, I am grateful.
What would you say to someone thinking about taking part in the next SingPoWriMo?
SingPoWriMo is perhaps one of the largest online literary communities I've been a part of. People in the group can be encouraging and welcoming, and there can be a welcome pressure to produce poetry if you're the sort of person that thrives under pressure. It can be a helpful exercise, whether you're looking to start writing poetry but don't know where to begin, or if you're stuck in a creative rut. It may also help you to sharpen a sense of what you want to write about and what you don't, clarifying the kind of inner voice that sustains a life in poetry.