Victoria Chang’s Poetics
The story behind the name “Meeting Benches” is wrapped in an atmosphere of romance and curiosity. It is born under the golden light of the sun or the soft light of the stars, where you find a bench, a meeting place and a point of connection between people. “Meeting Benches” is an invitation to sit, share stories, reflect and meet like-minded souls. A virtual meeting place and inspiration dedicated to travelers, artists, thinkers and dreamers from all over the world. Its virtual “benches” act as a point of connection, allowing people to share art, stories and thoughts. Together with digital images by Dastilige Nevante, this virtual place invites you to slow down, reflect and sit on a bench to share your vision of the world. Click above “Poetry” if you want to know other writers like Victoria Chang.
Her poetry seeks new stylistic strategies to address thorny topics such as death, and she believes that form is essential to define what we experience and write. To tell the perpetuating force of the parental experience, this poet also uses some short poems of Japanese tradition. If you want to explore the poems of Victoria Chang, originally from Taiwan and a professor at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, immerse yourself in her touching lyricism by reading “OBIT“, a poetry collection published in America in 2020. The word “obituary” (obituary) inspired the title of the book. With that text, she addresses the theme of the loss of loved ones and the responsibility of continuing to live. In one of the most intense lyrics, she describes the death of her mother and the painful wait of the nurse in the hospice. It seems crazy, but at least from her point of view, I take new ways of thinking and growing, poetry should expand both empathy and our minds. Home—died sometime around 1960 when my mother left Taiwan.
“HOME – Died sometime around 1960 when my mother left Taiwan. Home died again on August 3, 2015. Home’s fingertips trimmed off each time. New stubs became conscious, became heads of state, just shorter and fatter. Now home is a looking glass called Rose Hills Memorial Park. How far she has traveled from Beijing to Taiwan to New York to Pennsylvania to Michigan to California to Rose Hills. When a white writer has a character call another a squinty-eyed cunt, I search for my mother. I call her name but I can’t remember her voice. I think it is squinty. She would have said, don’t listen to Lao Mei, we all end up in the same place. But where is that place? Are there doors there? Cattails? Now there are barbed wires in her throat, her words are stillbirth. All the new flat tombstones since my last visit, little stretchers on the lawn. I lie down next to her stone, close my eyes. I know many things now. Even with my eyes closed, I know a bird passes over me. In hangman, the body forms while it is being hung. As in, we grow as we are dying.”
Victoria Chang’s poetic work stands out for emotional depth and ability to address complex themes with touching lyricism. In particular, the collection “OBIT.” Poems for the End” explores death and the loss of loved ones through a personal and intense poetic form. Chang uses innovative stylistic strategies and believes that poetry can expand human empathy and understanding. Her writing offers a unique perspective on life and death, inviting readers to reflect on these themes in a profound and meaningful way. Here is a quote from Victoria Chang’s poetry: “Death is an art, like everything else. It is not difficult to learn.” This quote reflects her ability to approach death with a unique and profound perspective. Her words invite us to consider death as an integral part of life and to learn from it.
“TONGUES – She died, beautiful and brilliant, on August 1, 2009 at 2:46 p.m. In love with the act of raising her hand, the tongue lived a life full of questions. Her favorite was to distort what others said. Her favorite was to write the world in black and white and then watch people try to read the words in color. The letters ran through my father’s brain before he died. Now his words are blind. They are folds. They are the sender, the messages and the receiver. When my mother died, I made everyone stand around the bed for what would be the last group photo. Some of us even laughed. Because death is forever until it’s over. Someone said, “Have some.” Someone said, “Smile.” Someone said, “Thank you.” The tongue betrays us. In the same way that breaking an arm means the arm bone can break but the arm itself doesn’t break unless it’s sawn or cut. My mother couldn’t speak but her eyes were the only ones that remained wide open.”
She received a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship and holds an MFA in Asian Studies from Harvard University, an MBA from Stanford University, and an MFA from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Victoria Chang is a Detroit-born poet, the daughter of an engineer and a teacher, both of whom immigrated from Taiwan. Although often laced with dark humor, her fifth collection of poems, OBIT, is an expression of grief over the deaths of her parents. In her obituary prose poems, Chang reflects the form of newspaper death notices or gravestones. Among her many honors, this collection of poems was a finalist for the Griffin Prize and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry. A children’s author and editor, she teaches in the MFA program at Antioch University and lives in Southern California with her family.
“THE FACE – He died on August 3, 2015 along with the body, particles of gray dust and small white bones. The face represents a state of the person, the part we show most to others. Could I identify my mother by her hands? By her feet? On the road to JFK, an old cemetery, tombstones of all sizes, tilted. The tombstone represents the face of a person, not in the way a photo represents a face. A siren has a meaning. It makes us look up and look for the train. When the train leaves, the tracks represent an absence but also imply that a train, once, existed. They imply hope, return. Maybe there is no beginning. Maybe nothing is an elegy, like a rain from the inside is neither a beginning nor an end.”
In writing a book about loss, it is almost as if she were holding a mirror that reflects life. Written by Victoria Chang after her mother’s death, after an initial rejection of the elegiac form for fear of falling into cliché, her book “OBIT” breaks down grief in all its lyricism. Her blue dress, empathy and friendships die when someone you love dies. But not only that, you too, survivor, die a little. Deep and touching words that express the fragility of the human soul and the connection between grief and survival. It is as if every loss leaves an indelible mark on us, a void that cannot be filled. Life goes on, but the weight of what has been lost remains with us.
