Victoria Chang says her new collection began with the loss of a neighborhood tree, but eventually grew to encompass a variety of influences, poems and art.
Chang, the acclaimed author of books that include “OBIT,” “With My Back to the World” and “Dear Memory,” has just published this collection of poems, “Tree of Knowledge,” that explores a range of experiences that involve trees, art and a shocking piece of California history.
The poet, whose work has been long-listed for the National Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, is traveling out of the country and responded via email to questions about the new book, as well as sharing a bit about her reading life.
“I am currently at an artist residency in Italy at a castle called Civitella Ranieri, and they have an extensive poetry library donated by the poet Mark Strand,” says Chang.
“They have a massive library, so I enjoy going downstairs to that library and picking up random books. I usually do that at libraries and also at bookstores, both independent and online. It’s quite a delightful way to read,” she says. “Reading will enrich your life, guaranteed, because it sparks and grows your imagination and sense of empathy, and hopefully by default, will make you and the world a better place.
The following has been edited for length and clarity, and a further discussion of the poet’s reading life will appear in this week’s Book Pages newsletter, arriving on July 10.
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Q. Please tell readers about “Tree of Knowledge,” your new collection of poems.
One day, a group of people came to the massive eucalyptus tree across the street and began to cut it down. That act seemed so sudden and violent. Over a week or more, I watched them methodically cut the limbs off, then shave the trunk down to a stump, and then slowly dismantle the stump. I was traumatized by this experience since the tree was so beautiful and I began to write poems about that tree. My book, “Tree of Knowledge,” like a tree, began to grow and spread into something much larger than that experience, but that was the root of the book.
The book also explores the history of the expulsion of Chinese people from Eureka, California, in 1885, which occurred when Eureka Councilman David Kendall was shot and killed in crossfire near Eureka’s Chinatown, and all the Chinese American residents were ordered to leave Eureka within 48 hours. In the first expulsion, ships transported 263 Chinese American people to San Francisco. I wrote poems in response to this history, and made art collages as well.
Q. Can you talk about how this particular collection came together?
Trees began to permeate my thinking, and I began to see trees everywhere, especially in art, so some of the poems in the book also began to take the shape of ekphrastic poems, or poems in conversation with visual art, especially those with trees in them. This book contains a multitude of influences and different kinds of poems, as well as my own art.
Q. The paintings of Joan Mitchell, Hilma af Klint and other artists (and poets such as Frank O’Hara) play a large role in these poems — can you describe what they mean to you and how you respond to them?
I love looking at art and think my mind might work a little more visually. I think art (and nature) can be great conversation partners. If you look closely at a painting, truly spend time with it, talk to it, it just might talk back. If you wave to a tree on a windy day, it might wave back. Looking is about respect and humility. When I write poems, I feel like I’m having these types of humble correspondences with paintings or nature.
Q. Please tell us about your long, powerful poem “Eureka,” if you would.
I learned about the expulsion of Chinese people from Eureka and many other cities on the West Coast a while back, and it’s something that has remained in my mind since. I even wrote a middle-grade verse novel with the same title, “Eureka.”
The long poem in the middle of “Tree of Knowledge,” also titled “Eureka,” is a more recent response to that expulsion. I revisited the town, revisited the massive redwood trees, and conducted some archival and primary research to help me write this poem.
The poem is written in 10-syllable lines without punctuation, so everything intersects – my own experiences with the city and trees, the history of the Chinese people in America and in Eureka, and the immigration of my own parents to this country, to create perhaps a braided incantatory effect.
Q. Trees and plant life recur in your work; do you feel a connection between the experience of building a poem and growing a plant?
Writing a poem for me isn’t quite as easy as growing a plant (although someone without a green thumb might disagree with me). I do think that writing poems requires a deep patience and a love of perception and seeing, as well as an acute attention to language while translating and/or transforming that seeing into a piece of art.
What I described is often the opposite of how people are asked/required to live today in this country. Reading and writing (without the help of anyone but your own mind) is a miracle for the body and soul. I think reading and writing are transformative. I’ve seen this in myself and in my various students over the years. Raising a poem, to use your analogy, feels like the patience required to raise anything. To do that well, you have to be patient, really see the thing you’re raising, and adjust all the time.
Q. You have kindly allowed us to reprint your poem, “Thanksgiving, 1965.” What would you like readers to know about it, and what can you share with us about it?
I wrote this poem after seeing Alice Neel’s painting, “Thanksgiving 1965,” where there’s this headless turkey unglamorously waiting in a regular sink with all the usual gritty sink accessories in the painting, such as sponges, dish rags, and Ajax. The painting felt so realistic and natural and not at all romantic or idealized.
I just started writing a poem in response to this painting, perhaps ruminating about my own childhood Thanksgivings and my mother’s favorite red maple tree in the front yard. The poem leaps a few times and ends up being a feminist poem, I think, about how women artists can be so busy that we have to find any time to create art, which is what Alice Neel probably did, stealing the minutes, and Helen Frankenthaler with her ceramic tiles she painted during the Thanksgiving holiday. Women artists also don’t always receive the respect they deserve. Artmaking is already a very private and solitary practice. There’s something miraculously beautiful about making art alone, but together in community without knowing it, all away from light and recognition. Artmaking as pure practice, pure joy, pure necessity.
Q. Poems allow meaning to emerge in a way that’s different from prose or, say, emojis. What appeals to you about the form?
I love poems for what they can do that no other art can, if I may say something so bold. Donald Hall said that a poem is “the unsayable said,” and I think that captures what a poem is or can do.
I might also add that a poem is able to say things in a way that no other art form can. Keats talked about “negative capability” and being in “uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without irritable reaching after fact and reason.” I think poetry is the perfect medium to explore negative capability. I’m not interested in certainty, which is why I love reading and writing poems.
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Q. Would you talk a little about the art and design of the book? How do you decide the shape a poem takes and whether you’ll incorporate photographs or a different colored ink?I figure these things out as I go. I first focus on the language, and once I feel comfortable with the language of the poem, I begin thinking about the shape of the poem, as well as other elements in the book, such as photographs, my own art, or other elements. It’s a very organic and joyful process of discovery. This is what makes artmaking fun — it’s a process of discovery; you never really know where the poem will go and that’s interesting and exciting. If you ever watch children making art, it’s a combination of deep concentration and pure joy. That’s pretty much what I still feel like when I make poems.
Q. You’ve lived in Los Angeles. What are some of the things you like about Southern California and/or its bookstores or literary culture?
I still have a home in Los Angeles and also have a home in Atlanta, where I work and teach at Georgia Tech. I have lived in Southern California for the longest period of my life. The air just feels right, it’s very diverse in terms of people and food, and I generally find people in the city to be delightful to interact with.
There is also a strong but constellated literary culture, in that each micro-area often has its own bookstore. There are so many great independent bookstores, such as Sunny’s Bookshop, Skylight Books, Book Soup, Vroman’s, and Pages. Each community has its own culture of reading and community.