Circle

by Victoria Chang

Taking its concept of concentricity from the eponymous Ralph Waldo Emerson essay, "Circle," the first collection from Victoria Chang, adopts the shape as a trope for gender, family, and history. These lyrical, narrative, and hybrid poems trace the spiral trajectory of womanhood and growth and plot the progression of self as it ebbs away from and returns to its roots in an Asian American family and context. Locating human desire within the helixes of politics, society, and war, Chang skillfully draws arcs between TOCOang Dynasty suicides and Alfred Hitchcock leading ladies, between the Hong Kong Flower Lounge and an all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch, the Rape of Nanking and civilian casualties in Iraq.

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Genres: Poetry, Asian American

76 pages, Paperback

First published March 3, 2005

About the author

Victoria Chang's latest book of poems is With My Back to the World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Corsair in the UK), which received the Forward Prize in Poetry for the Best Collection. Her most recent book is The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). Her prose book, Dear Memory, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. Her recent book of poems, OBIT, was published in 2020 by Copper Canyon Press. It was named a New York Times Notable Book, as well as a TIME, NPR, Publisher's Weekly, Book of the Year. It received the LA Times Book Prize, the PEN Voelcker Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Award. It was also a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the NBCC, and long listed for the NBA. She is the Bourne Chair of Poetry and the Director of Poetry@Tech at Georgia Tech.

Her website is www.victoriachangpoet.com. Twitter: @VChangPoet.

Reviews

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a fan of Victoria Chang's work for a long time, but I've gone through her books backwards, probably not a good way to give Circle, her first book a read. Knowing her later work, this feels like a first book: ambitious, talented, lyrically astute, but sometimes not pushing far enough, and other times pushing too much. Still, the range of Chang's subjects and the power of her voice are undeniable.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is her debut. You can both tell it is a debut and that she is going to be amazing.

[DilanAc · Rating 3 out of 5]

On first reading, many of these poems elude me but I am fascinated. Many of them are about particular women - Eva Braun or a woman who fought in the Civil War. Chang is not afraid to bring in traditional feminine concerns like items of adornment or cooking.
There are some wonderful lines - "This year I decided to be a bombshell./I played bottle cap table hockey/with strangers and trained/ my brain to say yes to martinis/ carried by men with small biographies."
This book reminds me a lot of Kim Addonzio What is this Thing Called Love. Lots of similar material, similar use of the vernacular, similar short lines. But Chang is more intellectual, her knowledge of math and science an unusual subject in some of these poems.

[Stephanie Lenox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Victoria Chang’s first book, winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry. Published in top-notch journals, Chang’s sparse poems have dramatic images that are both elemental and mysterious, and I enjoy her dramatic monologues most. Gorgeous lines like “want and want, an infinite/accordion” in “To Want” demonstrate her skill. A three-part book, the first focuses on other voices and has a long poem about Edward Hopper. The second section, more narrative and personal, contains my favorite poem in this book, “$4.99 All You Can Eat Sunday Brunch.” The final section, my least favorite, loses momentum. Overall, this book is carefully crafted and intelligent—a solid first round.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a strange personality presented in the first section of this book, and I'm not quite sure how it relates to the rest of it. It almost feels as though Chang wants to reveal herself as a reckless woman, and then justify those actions through the next two sections. My problem is that the poems in sections two and three are more compelling without knowing what she has mentioned in section one.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite first books by a younger poet. Chang uses a variety of forms and even pulls off an acrostic poem about a Kitchenaid stand mixer.

[Brendan]

Rating: 3 1/2

Family, historical figures and news stories, China and Chinese people, and a few poems about Edward Hopper paintings.

Notable:
"Eva Braun at Berchtesgaden" -
"Year of the Bombshell"
"Edward Hopper Study: Office at Night"