City of Rain by Alvin Pang

City of Rain Reviews

• 
  Sharifah Ainna

  I really liked this volume. Remembered picking it up while I was visiting Singapore again and started reading it while I was on the MRT. Read 'UPGRADING' and started laughing. Couldn't help myself. Poetry can sometimes be quite heavy but Pang has a way with words and this piece was quite funny.
  
  Sample lines:
  I want a bedroom so capacious I can park a Jaguar in it.
  
  Two Jaguars. I want it large enough to be a local oddity, a tourist
  attraction, the subject of awe and envy, a heritage site.
  
  So huge, developers will knock on my heavy door, asking to turn
  my land into condos for profit, and I will gleefully refuse.
  
  
  As you can see, he's quite entertaining. ;p Another one of my favourites is "S.WHILE IN THERAPY". The first line reads : Leapt from another tall building today. You could probably already guess who this is about.
  
  Though containing quite a few humourous poems, it does contain some serious poetry. It's a good volume to pick up and enjoy and revisit. Particularly if you've been to Singapore and this part of the world. :D
• 
  Meryl

  Poems I loved: New Eyes and Knowing! :)
• 
  Kristine

  Where to begin? Pang's poetry takes me into the thick of my own backyard and shows me treasure cupped in weathered hands, trinkets I have never seen before, Singapore reimagined and rediscovered. Forget the MRT map - this is the pocket guide to this tiny island. Particularly love "To Go to S'pore", an adaptation of Zagajewski's "To Go to Lvóv."
• 
  Jund Rian

  Upon reading the first few poems in Books Actually, I have no doubt that this book is one of the best book of poems I have ever read. The storytelling in each poem takes you to a certain maturity of the author as he relates some issues in the most creative and artistic of ways. A must have.
• 
  Joan

  god like. like i cannot emphasize how much i love this book of pomes. out of the three books that i'm doing for my research paper, this is my favourite. pang's voice is strong, clear and intelligent — if someone asked me to explain singapore to them in poetry, this might be the volume i would use.
• 
  Sabrina Loh

  Alvin Pang makes poetry look so easy! A smooth ride through each poem takes us to urban locations ripe with passing profundity and flashy, philosophical insights.