Southern Illinois University Press, 2005 eISBN: 978-0-8093-8833-2 | Paper: 978-0-8093-2618-1 Library of Congress Classification PS3603.H3575C57 2005 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.6
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Taking its concept of concentricity from the eponymous Ralph Waldo Emerson essay, Circle, the first collection from Victoria Chang, adopts the shape as a trope for gender, family, and history. These lyrical, narrative, and hybrid poems trace the spiral trajectory of womanhood and growth and plot the progression of self as it ebbs away from and returns to its roots in an Asian American family and context. Locating human desire within the helixes of politics, society, and war, Chang skillfully draws arcs between T’ang Dynasty suicides and Alfred Hitchcock leading ladies, between the Hong Kong Flower Lounge and an all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch, the Rape of Nanking and civilian casualties in Iraq.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Victoria Chang’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Nation, Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Threepenny Review, Best American Poetry 2005, and other publications, and she is the editor of the anthology Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. She has earned degrees from the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and Stanford University, and is the recipient of a Bread Loaf Scholarship, a Kenyon Writer’s Workshop Taylor Fellowship, the Hopwood Award, and the Holden Minority Fellowship from the MFA program at Warren Wilson College. She resides in Los Angeles.
REVIEWS
Chang's poems concern themselves with, among numerous topics, the lives of women. Not just the Chinese American woman - daughter, mother, grandmother - but also women in general: athelte, "bombshell", business-woman, gardener, lover. As well as women in history and art: Sarah Emmon Edwards, who joined the Union Army as a man; Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress; Yang Gui Fei, "favored concubine" of a Chinese emperor; and women in Edward Hopper's paintings. Chang's techniques are confident and varied: the unbalanced couplet, with the first line always longer than the second to keep readers off balance; synesthesia for tension and lyricism; wry and muscular diction. The book's ending phrase is an homage to Chang's foremother in Asian American poetry circles, Cathy Song: "a thousand young larks mount the sudden breeze." A paean to healing.
— Vince Gotera, North American Review May-August 2006
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Part One: On Quitting
To Want
Sarah Emma Edmonds
Eva Braun at Berchtesgaden
Lisa Fremont
Yang Gui Fei
Seven Reasons for Divorce
On Sameness
Year of the Bombshell
Hong Kong Flower Lounge
Man in the White Truck
Preparations
KitchenAid Epicurean Stand Mixer
Edward Hopper Studies
Hotel Room
Office at Night
Room in New York
Before
On Quitting
Part Two: Five-Year Plan
The Laws of the Garden
Five-Year Plan
$4.99 All You Can Eat Sunday Brunch
The Goal
Chinese Speech Contest
Holiday Parties
An Evening at the Chinese Opera
Morning Porridge
At Lake Michigan
There Is Something about the East Coast
Golden Valley
First Halloween
Majority Rules
Mostly Ocean
Dragon Inn
Part Three: Limits
Lantern Festival
Flight
The Tower of London
Seven Changs
Planting Tulips
Instinct
Damage
Gamble House
Human Inventory
Limits
Animal Models
Taiwan Independence
Grooming
Face
Meditation at Petoskey
Southern Illinois University Press, 2005 eISBN: 978-0-8093-8833-2 Paper: 978-0-8093-2618-1
Taking its concept of concentricity from the eponymous Ralph Waldo Emerson essay, Circle, the first collection from Victoria Chang, adopts the shape as a trope for gender, family, and history. These lyrical, narrative, and hybrid poems trace the spiral trajectory of womanhood and growth and plot the progression of self as it ebbs away from and returns to its roots in an Asian American family and context. Locating human desire within the helixes of politics, society, and war, Chang skillfully draws arcs between T’ang Dynasty suicides and Alfred Hitchcock leading ladies, between the Hong Kong Flower Lounge and an all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch, the Rape of Nanking and civilian casualties in Iraq.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Victoria Chang’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Nation, Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Threepenny Review, Best American Poetry 2005, and other publications, and she is the editor of the anthology Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. She has earned degrees from the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and Stanford University, and is the recipient of a Bread Loaf Scholarship, a Kenyon Writer’s Workshop Taylor Fellowship, the Hopwood Award, and the Holden Minority Fellowship from the MFA program at Warren Wilson College. She resides in Los Angeles.
REVIEWS
Chang's poems concern themselves with, among numerous topics, the lives of women. Not just the Chinese American woman - daughter, mother, grandmother - but also women in general: athelte, "bombshell", business-woman, gardener, lover. As well as women in history and art: Sarah Emmon Edwards, who joined the Union Army as a man; Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress; Yang Gui Fei, "favored concubine" of a Chinese emperor; and women in Edward Hopper's paintings. Chang's techniques are confident and varied: the unbalanced couplet, with the first line always longer than the second to keep readers off balance; synesthesia for tension and lyricism; wry and muscular diction. The book's ending phrase is an homage to Chang's foremother in Asian American poetry circles, Cathy Song: "a thousand young larks mount the sudden breeze." A paean to healing.
— Vince Gotera, North American Review May-August 2006
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Part One: On Quitting
To Want
Sarah Emma Edmonds
Eva Braun at Berchtesgaden
Lisa Fremont
Yang Gui Fei
Seven Reasons for Divorce
On Sameness
Year of the Bombshell
Hong Kong Flower Lounge
Man in the White Truck
Preparations
KitchenAid Epicurean Stand Mixer
Edward Hopper Studies
Hotel Room
Office at Night
Room in New York
Before
On Quitting
Part Two: Five-Year Plan
The Laws of the Garden
Five-Year Plan
$4.99 All You Can Eat Sunday Brunch
The Goal
Chinese Speech Contest
Holiday Parties
An Evening at the Chinese Opera
Morning Porridge
At Lake Michigan
There Is Something about the East Coast
Golden Valley
First Halloween
Majority Rules
Mostly Ocean
Dragon Inn
Part Three: Limits
Lantern Festival
Flight
The Tower of London
Seven Changs
Planting Tulips
Instinct
Damage
Gamble House
Human Inventory
Limits
Animal Models
Taiwan Independence
Grooming
Face
Meditation at Petoskey
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC