The Radical Grief of Obit
The elegies in Victoria Chang’s new collection show us how grief radiates from a central loss inwardly toward self-examination, and outwardly toward collective grief.
Victoria Chang
W. S. Merwin’s Ancestral Memory in Victoria Chang’s The Trees Witness Everything
Almost every poem in Victoria Chang’s new collection gets its title from a W. S. Merwin poem of the same name. Both poets seem to believe in the idea that history and life are really just ongoing cycles designed to propel us forward, just as they also keep us tied to our pasts.
Obit by Victoria Chang
The emotional power of Chang’s new collection comes from the grace and honesty with which she turns this familiar form inside out to show us the private side of family, the knotting together of generations, the bewilderment of grief.
Worker by Gary Hawkins, The Boss by Victoria Chang, and the Exploration of Work in Poetry
If Hawkins’s workers struggle with their materials or the limits of their strength and stamina, Chang reveals a different antagonist through the figure of the boss, firing workers at will and propping up the corporation.