The Trees Witness Everything
Victoria Chang
Copper Canyon Press: 2022
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They arrive passim: The crow’s invoice signalled death. Birds are a transcript of our thoughts. The owl eyes were mirrors. Wings pushed down metaphors. Then there are the trees. Victoria Chang’s status can afford this expansive, sometimes catch-all collection, and here I’ll catch just some of its currents. The diversity is underpinned by the protocols of the waka, the traditional Japanese syllabic form with variants like the katauta and choka, though Chang cheerfully admits she breaks their rules occasionally, seeing them as constructive, not a constraint. A second underpinning is the poems of W.S. Merwin. Besides being discernible as a tutelary presence in terms of his own themes and forms, Chang acknowledges her poems have been ‘based’ on some of Merwin’s titles, even acting as her ‘prompt’.

• Tags: Issue 27, Michael Freeman, Victoria Chang