The trees witness everything

Chang follows Obit (2020) with a new collection in four sublime parts. At the start, Chang works with a traditional Japanese form, waka, also known as tanka, or short poem, and adroitly uses titles of poems by W. S. Merwin as prompts, creating astonishingly subtle poems that gracefully bloom. In "The String," she writes, "When the earth rotates, / a person not tied down with / longing falls off into space." The book's second section is "Marfa, Texas," a long poem sculpted out of reflection on that enigmatic art mecca in the West Texas desert. Lines pop out: "Here, / you can pay someone to clip / off your shadow and walk it / across the border." Or "Here, / when I cry in my head, my / tears come out as letters." The poet's dialog with Merwin continues in part three, "The Shipwreck," as she offers "I sit at my desk. / Desire is an anchor-- / I lift it and words come up." Wildness is alive throughout in birds--hawks, crows, and wounded larks--along with crickets and beetles that appear between sentences. "Love Letters" closes this enlightened collection, which reads as an amalgam of buoyant messages from the pandemic we're all experiencing with lines like: "Don't forget what happened / last year--when you missed people / so much you let them in." Poetic wisdom past and present is very much alive here.

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. (Apr.)

Green Fields I was supposed to return to the fields daily. I haven't been there since birth. On some nights, I smell smoke that I think is the field, but when I follow it, there is just a clothesline with half my life clipped on it, drying in the sun. Strawberries Mother brought a spray bottle to pick strawberries. She made us spray them before eating. I never cared that hundreds of red eyes watched me as I took my first bite. They all knew that the war had begun, that June began the killing. My Other Dark I imagine my life as a Chinese Empress, proud of my face, eyes. Even the moon has black hair, mountaintops of Chinese snow. In this life, I am nothing. Turning My mother is dead. The lemons still turn yellow, the trout still stare emptily, desire is still free. We still love many people, eat peaches as if kissing. When the War is Over I once saw the deer. They were all wearing blue scarves. We have finally finished killing everything. We are now looking ahead, but have killed past the future. Snowfall We say the snow falls, but the snow really seizes. Because it is light, it takes seven years to grab. By the time it does, the old wars are over and my mother is dead. But it lands on the new wars, melts on another mother. In the Open The weather is wet, the weather doesn't have joints. How the snow just becomes rain, what is that change called? Trees witness everything, why do they always look away? Lives of the Artists I brush my hair and wonder if you are watching. I write a word and attach it to a speaker-- someone please listen. Words come out of my coffin, made of maple. When empty, it will return to the trees who speak to no one. The Lovers There is a wildfire starving on top of a lake. See how the water holds fire, but cannot end it? Why do we insist on love, when all we want is mercy. Excerpted from The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.