The Trees Witness Everything, by Victoria Chang

Victoria Chang’s most recent book, The Trees Witness Everything, contains over one hundred and seventy short poems; a lyric sequence written in five-line blocks inspired by her time in Marfa, Texas, during a Lanna residency, called ‘Marfa, Texas’; and, to end the book, a series of haiku, collectively entitled ‘Love Letters’. The short poems are written in loose interpretations of various traditional Japanese forms such as the sedoka and tanka. In addition, every short poem takes its title from the title of a W. S. Merwin poem. According to Chang’s note in the back of the book, she did this “as a way to subconsciously avoid preconceived subject matter…and as a way to inhabit another person’s mind.” Before she began to write, she selected a Merwin title as a prompt, chose a form from her list of Japanese forms, and wrote the poem. Sometimes she read the Merwin poem before composing her own, sometimes not.

Merwin was a great influence on me as a poet for many years. So I was happy to hear the influence of Merwin in Chang’s work the first time I heard her read in public. Some of the poems in The Trees are at least in some way in conversation with Merwin. Some of them seem to respond to the Merwin poem or theme with a post-modernist cynicism (similar to Merwin’s work in the early to mid 60’s). Some of the poems seem to be like echoes of the original Merwin poems—echoes that have been reverberating for a long time, so that though they are diminished, they are still haunting, as in ‘Little Horse’:

Little Horse

by Victoria Chang

No one judges it,

not even the flattered grass.

Horses are simple,

we train them and they listen.

I want so much from a horse.

It just gives me fifty years.

Little Horse

by W. S. Merwin

You come from some other forest
do you
little horse
think how long I have known these
deep dead leaves
without meeting you

I belong to no one
I would have wished for you if I had known how
what a long time the place was empty
even in my sleep
and loving it as I did
I could not have told what was missing

what can I show you
I will not ask you if you will stay
or if you will come again
I will not try to hold you
I only hope you will come with me to where I stand
often sleeping and waking
by the patient water
that has no father nor mother

Some of the poems share no more than a title, as Chang can find her subject in the poem from something else entirely. But it is a fun exercise to read the Chang poem and the Merwin poem together. It is a courageous act to invite your poems to be read alongside the work of a major poet.

Of course this may not have been Chang’s intention. As she says in her notes, “I chose to doubly constrain myself because formal constraints often have the opposite effect on my writing. Terrance Hayes once said in an interview, ‘My relationship to form is that of a bird inside its cage, moving around.’”

I know from hearing her speak of it that the poems in at least one of her previous books, Obit, all arrived in a short period of something like a couple weeks. I do not know if that was the case with these poems, but they seem to have the same sense of spontaneous energy. Overall the poems are far more uneven here than those of Obit, which nearly always found some way of being evocative. Perhaps writing the poems of the previous book quickly worked so well because Chang had a consistent theme to write into. There are many fantastic poems in The Trees…, but there are also those I found myself wishing she had spent a little more time on. Even if a poem is short, I still hope to have the feeling, when I first read it, of wanting to linger over it and read it again. Some of the poems, such as ‘Late Wonders’, may not be consistently interesting, but can still end with a line as memorable as “Fame is a bucket of eyes.” I would be more than happy to read an otherwise less inspiring poem in order to find a line such as that.

Of course, in a book with so many poems, it is inevitable that there may be some a particular reader doesn’t like. I could speak of how Chang’s invariable plain style does and does not serve some of the poems, but Chang’s greatest trait, her inventiveness, is nearly always on display in this book.

There are too few short poems being written and published by well-known poets such as Victoria Chang. The Trees Witness Everything demonstrates over and over again how powerful a short poem can be when it is written by a great writer. I hope it will inspire other writers to attempt shorter poems as well.

Utterance

Have you ever stood

on a highway in pitch-black

and heard nothing but singing?

The growing acceptance of LGBTQ+ in America can be seen in the increasing numbers of people who openly identify as such:

Only .8% of those over 77 identify as LGBTQ +

3% of Baby Boomers identify as LGBTQ +

4.2% of Gen X identify as LGBTQ +

10.5% of Millennials identify as LGBTQ +

and 21% of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ +

I sometimes try to remind myself that it does not matter how many poems I have written, but how many good poems I have written. But my definition of ‘good’ has changed so often, I am never sure what I consider ‘good’ now will be so in two years, a year, three months, or three days. And though I have written many ‘bad’ poems, rarely did I not enjoy writing them. For so many joys, and all the learning I did through writing them, I would never say I regret those bad poems.

Even when I am writing about what happened to me in the past, I am also writing about what is happening to me now.

What interested me, eventually, decades after I began to write, was no longer separating my writing self from my social self. When I began doing so, I continued to be alienated from others in my life. If not more so. But I was no longer alienated from myself. 

Often the men who conform to the model of toxic masculinity do so because they lacked any other models to emulate. This does not abnegate their responsibility for their manner of being. But it may allow for at least an understanding of how they arrived at their position. It may be that such understanding can then be extended to those who practice toxic masculinity. They may see what harm they are doing, what harm they have done, and that other modalities of masculinity exist. By refusing to at least understand them, we reject them outright as human beings, which may only cause a further reactionary response. That will not help them, and will only increase our own irresolvable anger. 

The emergence of lyric poetry liberated us from the need to extrapolate a narrative from every poem. During the period of modern art, poetry no longer needed to give any allegiance to the concept of the linear whatsoever. 

Yet perhaps because narrative forms such as movies and television shows and novels are how people most frequently enjoy art, they often seem to expect to be able to extract some kind of narrative progression when they come to a poem. This happens often even among poets. And if they can’t extract a clear narrative, they may consider the poem a failure. If a poet consistently refuses any semblance of narrative in their poetry, they may be considered obscure or, like Celan, derisively labeled ‘gnomic’. 

Words are not merely abstract vehicles of signification: they themselves can act as tones. Just as I don’t expect to find a story when I stand in front of a Rothko painting, or to be able to extrapolate what an Ornette Coleman solo is ‘about’, I can be intensely moved by a late Celan poem, or a piece by Lyn Hejinian, without being able to reword the poem as a specific scene.

As a writer I want the reader to find what they can for themselves in my work, rather than attempting to find me. I want to read criticism that relinquishes any concern as to what the author may or may not have intended. This isn’t a silencing of the author; rather it allows the possibility for the reader to respond to the work in the most unique way possible. 

Why should the author dictate the interpretation of their own work? Why should any critic assume only a single interpretation of a work is possible? For me, such dictation comes too close to a dictatorial sensibility. The belief that there is an authoritative interpretation seems authoritarian. I don’t want to own someone else’s response. The reader’s reaction to the work does not belong to the writer, and it certainly doesn’t belong to the critic. 

What is the difference between a writer being ‘cancelled’ and a writer being suppressed? Isn’t removing a writer’s works from online the 21st century equivalent of burning books? Should a writer who has been accused of wrong in the past, but never been proven guilty, be cancelled? Though we are all subject to a justice system that favors certain individuals, isn’t it better to maintain the principle of being innocent until proven guilty rather than regressing as a society towards the standard of guilty unless proven innocent? 

Old but fascinating New Yorker article on the human tendency towards confirmation bias:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds?mbid=appleNews

Despite many of the nations of the world recently moving further towards autocracy, Ukraine still stands, many election-deniers were defeated in the U.S. midterms, and the majority of S. America is now socialist.

William S. Burroughs, Thanksgiving Prayer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLSveRGmpIE

CW: offensive language, lack of patriotism

Today I received my fifty-sixth acceptance thus far this year. I’ve had ten poems published in the last few days. I meet with one writing group twice a month, and another group once a month. I have a website. There are other poets I can call my friends.

Two and a half years ago I had yet to meet a single poet in my life. I had never submitted a poem, and had no idea how to do so.

For thousands of years, verse was considered the natural medium for stories, religion, and philosophy. Anything that was considered important should be set into verse. Now nearly everyone in our culture equates poetry only with lyric. I would like to do what I can to demonstrate verse can be a vehicle for more than that—as it always has been.

If Kyrie Irving had conducted himself differently over the last few years, we would be arguing over who is the better point guard, him or Stephen Curry. Instead we have to argue about whether or not he should even be allowed to remain in the league.

It may be that no one has ever been a better ball handler than he is. His creativity around the hoop is unequalled in the league. I can despise him any time he doesn’t have a basketball in his hands. His talent is such that he could be listed among the all-time greats at the point-guard position. But his personal decisions are such that he may be remembered more for his conduct off the court than anything he has done while on it.

I have found it extremely helpful to know what projects I will work on the next work day before the next work day begins. And to plan what projects I will work on after the current ones are in a finished state. This way I do not have to spend time considering what to do.

The process of progression with some of poets I have spoken with seems to often be lacking in such planning. They wonder how to proceed with the current poem, they have no idea what the next poem will be, they take breaks after completing a manuscript. Unfortunately, because poetry doesn’t pay, or pays very little, a poet’s time is always limited in some manner.

Some may argue that such concerns overvalue efficiency—that by acting in such a way we are following the capitalist paradigm. For myself I am always attempting to be as efficient as possible. Not because I am trying to generate as many poems as possible, but so that I can use every moment I can to writing—because that is what I value. 

The supreme court continues its conservative rampage. This article however demonstrates something I think should be talked about more often: we must not be concerned only with racial inequality, we must also be concerned with class inequality. And about the lie that America is or has ever been a place of equal opportunity.

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/democratizing-elitism/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=3890aec058-reading_list_11_5_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-3890aec058-41224870&mc_cid=3890aec058&mc_eid=2cfd0a714d

Estimates of the total cost of stopping climate change range from $300 billion to $50 trillion. Every year the total world expenditure on the military is about $2 trillion. In a completely idealistic situation, if the world diverted its military budget towards saving the planet, we could end the threat of climate change, at the latest, by 2050. The projects necessary to accomplish this would do much to mitigate world poverty. They would also require international cooperation, which would mean the military would no longer be necessary. 

I would need at least five long lifetimes to write all the books I want to write, and at least fifteen lifetimes to read all the books I want to read. So how to proceed with only one lifetime?