The Trees Witness Everything
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2022
'Impeccable, precise poems, sometimes shocking and strange, but always startling' Irish Times
A lover of strict form, best-selling poet Victoria Chang turns to compact Japanese waka, powerfully innovating on tradition while continuing her pursuit of one of life's hardest questions: how to let go.
In The Trees Witness Everything, Victoria Chang reinvigorates language by way of concentration, using constraint to illuminate and free the wild interior. Largely composed in various Japanese syllabic forms called 'wakas,' each poem is shaped by pattern and count. This highly original work innovates inside the lineage of great poets including W.S. Merwin, whose poem titles are repurposed as frames and mirrors for the text, stitching past and present in complex dialogue. Chang depicts the smooth, melancholic isolation of the mind while reaching outward to name - with reverence, economy and whimsy - the ache of wanting, the hawk and its shadow, our human urge to hide the minute beneath the light.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The elegant and reflective fourth collection from Chang (Obit) presents a moving elegy for both her deceased mother and the dying Earth, using form to capture the fleeting nature of life. Many of these poems are written as Japanese wakas-short, syllabic-based poems that give shape to a stark image or idea. They revolve around elements of the natural world-flora and fauna-often with spiritual connotations suggesting that nonhuman animals are just a hair's breadth from the divine: "I've watched so many spiders/ lift one last leg toward God." In moments like these, the poems seem like fragments of enlightenment collectively working toward a revelation. A longer poem titled "Marfa, Texas" explores the scenery and inhabitants of the city, with a focus on human-animal connections: "My day/ was this horse... This horse is also all the hours/ of my life that are unlived." The collection ends with a long poem titled "Love Letters," an ode to resilience in the face of profound loss, and the significant, necessary role that grief plays in life: "We are made of sorrow./ It threads through us and/ holds our organs together." For those who are grieving and those who have grieved, Chang offers beautiful insights, and a path toward healing.
