Description

CopperCanyon Press, paperback

Publication Date: April 26, 2022

Publisher Marketing:InThe 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 namewith reverence, economy, and whimsythe ache of wanting, the hawk and its shadow, our human urge to hide the minute beneath the light.