Victoria Chang was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1970 and raised in the suburb of West Bloomfield. At the end of the day, youre facing no one but yourself. I remember at some points feeling like I was getting too detailed, and in the minutiae about things that only I would care about, and then I would try and lift it up a little bit more, like a drone shooting up into the air. Yeah. If Obit sought a container for loss, Dear Memory is a messier formal experiment, an open-ended inquiry not of a bounded life but of an ongoing present, full of longing and imperfection. The book includes four obituaries for Victoria Chang.. Where did you go to graduate school? HS:I think youve probably seen this already, but once this full collection is out, people are going to be teaching obits. We have absolutely no control over it. Her forthcoming book of poems is The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). applies to those who continue to struggle long after a loss. I just went in the other direction, really stark and really dry and really clean. A phone hangs behind them. Victoria Chang is an American poet, writer, editor, and critic. . We think of form as oftentimes constraining us, but in this case, it was so free. Its a little more robust. Each move granted the next generation access to the kind of future the previous one could only imagine. At intervals, the book includes tankas a traditional Japanese poetic form often written by women and a long sonnet-like series that stretches in fractured lines across the pages, a visual and textual counterpoint to the sharply confined obits. The last definition of absence is the nonexistence or lack of. I think a lot of poets have depressive tendencies, and I certainly do. The editors discuss Victoria Chang's "Barbie Chang" from the October 2016 issue of Poetry. When my mom died oh my gosh. In that way, its a way of connecting people. I just have this yearning desire to ask her something, to ask her questions, or to help me with something, and shes not there. The obits are for her parents, but also for everything that changes when someone dies. Here are some ways to offer your support to someone grieving. She is a core faculty member in Antioch University's low-residency MFA Program. As a person whos really just barreling forward in life, its just like, Oh wait, I cant do that anymore? I was taught to be strong, and to be that pillar, all the time. Changs poems, too, attempt to contain loss. She also reads work structured in a Japanese syllabic form called waka. Chang's first book, Circle (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry. And I am just so excited to get them out into the world. Its not a big deal. Someone could pick up my bookin the same way I picked up Meghan ORourkes book, or Joan Didions booksand suddenly feel connected to me. The person I see today is not my father. Ive always been really interested in philosophy. Join our community book club. They are wounds, not buried bodies. VC: Those poems are from a manuscript that never got published. When someone you care about dies, if theyre a big part of your life at least, which my mom obviously was, especially because she was so sick and my dad was sick too, everything dies. Obit By Victoria Chang Caretakers died in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, one after another. Was it really soon after your mother died? Could I even describe these feelings? It was also named a New York Times Notable Book, a New York Times Best 100 Books of the Year, a TIME Magazine, NPR, Boston Globe, and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. Thank you! HS: No, it makes total sense. That dichotomy is so bizarre. When writing an obituary, a life is packaged and presented. Its mimicking the obituary form in that way, because I think its really hard to pull off really sad poems by being sad. She also shares new, uncollected poems. Victoria Chang's new book of poetry, OBIT, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020 and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, long listed for a National Book Award, as well as a finalist for the PEN Voeckler Award and the LA Times Book Award. I appreciate humor in real life a lot. Lacunae. VC: So, they twirled around a little bit. I put them in little couples together. (2021). She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a MacDowell Fellowship. HS: And grief is not something you can control. So, youre helping four people do opposite things. Why am I working so hard at life if I am just going to die? Once I started writing, I didnt even have time to sit down and make a list of things I thought. Dear Memory begins with a photograph of a young Chang sitting with her mother and sister. Residential For Sale . Try for free at rocketreach.co We didnt grow up with that Western religion. I remember that after I had my first kid, I just felt, again, like a lot of things died. But you have the card, so you could enter the club, but maybe no ones there right now. Though organizing themes or contours have always been central to written poetry, recent books design and enact forms that specifically deny the traditional supremacy and intensive mythology of Western logic Victoria Chang on bonsai trees, witticisms, and the wisdom of not giving a crap. Thank you for your support. 1. People have much worse experiences, though. After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Except that it takes this unique form in each of us, and it shifts around. Victoria Chang is the author of The Trees Witness Everything, forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2022; Dear Memory (Milkweed, 2021); and OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). But her engagement is always brief and her destination always feels predetermined, something she herself admits in a letter to her teacher: Once you told me that sometimes I was in danger of outsmarting my poems, that sometimes my poems were written to illustrate an understanding I already had.. My poems, when they first started out were influenced by other people and their styles. Then recently theres been a resurgence, I guess, of interest, in haibuns, and I didnt want to be that sort of Asian-phile person, interested in Eastern poetry. The book alternates between these forms collaged images and text. Her middle grade novel Love Love is forthcoming. This book, I think, was a combination of the heart and the mind. Because it takes over our entire being. Was there something about their connection to death that resonated with you? So that, combined with my schedule, I feel like thats how I write poems. Dr. Victoria Chang is an ophthalmologist in Naples, Florida and is affiliated with Houston Methodist Willowbrook Hospital. HS: Whatever you did, your drone-magic-stuff worked. Youre in time, if that makes sense, or outside of time, but youre not being dragged along with it. To send a letter is to believe in a time and place in which it will be read. HS: The Obit poems encompass your mother, but not just your motheralso your father, whos lost his ability to speak because of a stroke. And he died too. Tags: Obit, Victoria Chang She lives in Southern California with her family and works in business. A collection of poets and articles exploring Asian American culture. 8115 Queens Blvd Ste 2A, Elmhurst, NY, 11373. Defining memory as being "shaped by motion, movement, and migration," Chang sees a direct connection between memory and identity formation. Where the letters in the book are searching and digressive, written without expectation of an answer, the interview is a formal, real-time exchange. And I was like, good luck with that because we lose; its automatic. The actor discusses Hollywood survival skills, winning the lottery, and her interest in telling messy Asian American stories. 2023 Cond Nast. The editors discuss Victoria Changs poem Obit in the July/August 2018 issue of Poetry. Its not even about going on vacation together, its just the little things that I miss. I am frightened, now that the trees look like question marks, how the moon makes strange noises but it's daytime. Victoria Chang - Poet, Writer, and Editor Victoria Chang ABOUT Victoria Chang's forthcoming book of poems, With My Back to the World will be published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Corsair Books in the U.K. People have said this tooyoure born, and you get diapers, and then you die and you have to wear diapers. Chang's husband, Lall, has vast experience in the tech world. Work harder than everyone else, do the best you can, and just go-go-go, mostly because its a good thing to be ambitious, apparently, but also because we are marginalized in all sorts of obvious ways. "Victoria Changdied unwillingly on April 21, 2017 on a cool day in Seal Beach, California," says another still. I was trying to write the book that I needed to help me through my grief because I didnt find anything in poetry that helped me. Then, my mind naturally moves a lot, so my brain is absolutely like a pinball machine, the way it works, and sometimes its too much, its too fast. They are brimming with questions. I think its because of my agemy parents became ill maybe a little earlier than average, and then I had children a little bit later, and so it kind of mixed together so that my children were exactly the same age as my parents, in terms of dying. The immediate spark for these poems was her mother's death in 2015. VICTORIA CHANG - New Letters. Victoria Song Qian's first rumored boyfriend is Nichkhun. After my mother died, I looked at a photo where she had moved into assisted living from the ER. Help people feel things, if that makes sense. She is currently welcoming new patients and accepts most . Everybody brings stuffed animals to the dying, but kids like stuffed animals, not the dying. Get 5 free searches. Then I really went in there and I used that drone again to make these a little bit less specific, and more about existential sorts of things. I was thinking Oh, it must leak out somehow. VC: Its so prevalent. The same with foods like apple sauce. I dont want it, and I dont need it. VC: Right. VC: Absolutely. As Chang writes, What form can express the loss of something you never knew but knew existed? That became the challenge, and that was really, really hard. HS: Someone said to me a few years ago to write hard stuff in form.