The search of Muhammad Haji Salleh's works..

As i was still searching for Muhammad Haji Salleh's works through the internet, i found a very interesting website on a book of compilation of Malaysian Poems.

http://edwinvethamani.com/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=201

In Sights is a compilation of Malaysian poems which has been introduced to me by Dr Edwin himself in our class. It is an interesting book whereby the poems are written by Malaysian writers either it is being translated into English or being written originally in English. The introduction has caught my eyes.
IN-SIGHTS: Malaysian Poems is a compilation of poems by Malaysians, which were either written or translated into the English language. It is probably the first volume of poetry that present work that has been translated from Bahasa Melayu into English poems that were originally written in English. The title of the volume, IN-SIGHTS, reflects the various pictures the poets paint of Malaysian life: its sights, sounds, smells and scenes.In a country where homogeneity is often extolled, IN-SIGHTS is a celebration in diversity. It is a celebration of the many voices that enrich Malaysian literature. These writers bring their cultures and individual beliefs into their poems and share them with us, and the rest of the world. These voices give us a variety of Malaysian perspectives and perceptions.
The publication of an anthology of poems are rare and infrequent in Malaysia. Though there are more opportunities today for poets these opportunities are still few and infrequent. Student in schools do read poems and literature students in universities, as part of their course requirements, also do the same.
IN-SIGHTS is a collection of poems for all readers. It is structured thematically: family, growing up, people, relationship, nature, conservation and landscape. The contributors for this volume of poems are both established and emerging poets. Their voices represent the differing generations, cultures, gender and perspectives.

Muhammad Haji Salleh's "words for father" open this volume of poems. In a culture where children are expected to be seen and not heard, a child has words for his father. It is the voice of a young man to an aging father: ... It is time to rest now / to close your voice on the world, to feel the luxury of the holidays / that u never took ... . Comforting words are they? In the section on "Family", poets portray relationship between the different generations and deal with number of family-related issues. The poems consider both celebrations and conflicts that family members encounter. This section closes with dialogue between a grandfather and a grandchild, both considering the other's world in M SHANmughalingam's "Heir Conditioning".
The section on "Growing up" presents various portraits of the transition from childhood to adulthood. Shirley Lim's "Hands" and Hilary Tham's "Becoming A Woman" highlight the receiving of maternal wisdom while Bernice Chauly's "Picking Fruit" deals with a child's response to the death of a parent. Muhammad Haji Salleh closes the section with the recollections of childhood in "on a dry bund".
A number of poems in the next section, "People", dwell on the arduous lives of Malaysian in relation to their occupations-the fishermen, the satay-vendor, the dulang-washer, the farmer and the maid. In many ways, the opening lines in Wong Phui Nam's "For My Amah", "To most your dying seems distant, / outsides the palings of our concern" reflect our relationship with these people. Yet, through these poems we get a glimpse of Malaysian lives as they are lived.
In the section on "Relationships", the poets present a range of relationships. Fadzildah Amin, in her poem "Dance", uses the Malay dance ronggeng as a metaphor to describe the nature of the relationship. Cecil Rajendra's "Untitled Poem" examines what love while Charlene Rajendran in "A Question of Rights" voices some of the concerns related to being single or marrying, for a woman.
The section entitled "Nature" presents both Malaysian fauna and flora. In "To a Shrub", Ee Tiang Hong celebrates the bougainvillaea and Shirley Lim considers a "Land-Turtle". Poems in this section also depict the forces of nature that is experienced in Malaysian. Muhammad Haji Salleh's "poem rain" presents the dependence of man nature for survival.
The last two sections present poems in these two sections bring to the readers' attention to the need to take charge of one's are visual poems, "cross-word poem" and "The Wall". These poems show us yet another way of capturing our experiences and the world. Omar Mohd. Noor's "three layers", closes this section and IN-SIGHTS, succinctly portraying the ever-changing Malaysian landscape.
IN-SIGHTS is structured thematically and it merely suggests one reading of the poems. Readers will find other ways of reading the poems and this only goes to ascertain the multiplicity in the reading of any good literary work. Adrian Mitchell (1964) wrote: Most people ignore most poetry, because, most poetry ignores most people.
IN-SIGHTS, a thematic anthology of Malaysian poetry, is an attempt to bring poetry to more readers and present poetry that considers a variety of people, their experience and concerns. In so doing, give les cause for ignoring poetry.

Malaysian poems are the poems that malaysians should read as we could connect them to our lives and experiences. I do agree that by reading malaysian poems, we get to know Malaysia better. We could even get to know Malaysian's culture.

There are a few poems written by Muhammad Haji Salleh in this book and after reading some of his other works, i think that his works are quite impressive and i love reading his poems.