Tree of Knowledge: Poems

by Victoria Chang

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY

A poet watches the limbs of a eucalyptus tree get sawed the image persists, refracting and recurring across poems of art, language, selfhood, memory, and loss.

Joan Mitchell said, When I talk about love, I mean loving a tree. When I talk about love, I mean loving where a tree used to be.

Men assess the eucalyptus tree growing on the poet’s street; a crane arrives. The sound of a chainsaw rings in the air and branches begin to fall. This tree-cutting haunts the poet and becomes the locus from which the rest of the collection spirals. It refracts across works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Mitchell, and Hilma af Klint, whose painting series lends the collection its title and who becomes a model for engaging with the world. At the core of the collection, the long poem “Eureka” examines the violent 1885 expulsion of Chinese Americans from the eponymous California town. Roving, evocative, and intricate, Tree of Knowledge is rooted in Victoria Chang’s crystalline voice and generous, probing gaze, and by certain images ―trees, a hanging figure, a branch, fingertips, a briefcase―that resurface like apparitions.

Genres: Poetry, Aapi, Nature

144 pages, Hardcover

Published July 7, 2026

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

[aubrey · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

a beautiful poetry collection occasionally interrupted by Pinterest/Instagram caption lines that jarred me out of it. this is a collection of poetry written in response to works of art by Picasso, Alice neel, and others, connecting themes of trees as containers (of knowledge, grief, trauma, etc.) and relating that to the human experience. there were lines that stopped me in my tracks and had me rereading them to really soak in the language.

"Once I am no longer a woman, the narrative poem/will finally turn into a lyric one. Maybe war is our insistence on/the narrative when we are descendants of the lyric" - from "fig. 15"

"If you have children, you must know/how fake hope is" - from "Tree, 2010"

"Eureka" is the big centerpiece poem and dynamite across every level, and a response to the California town of Eureka expelling hundreds of Chinese-American people to San Francisco. totally an easy recommendation for those who read and enjoy poetry.

*Longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for Poetry*

[A Dreaming Bibliophile · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an eARC.

This was a great collection of poetry. I found the concept very unique, where a lot of the poems are based on paintings or the author's response to the message in the painting/own interpretation of it. I think it'll significantly improve your reading experience if you're looking at the referenced paintings side by side and comparing your interpretation with hers. Some of my favourite poems include Blue Territory, Trees 1990-1991 and Hemlock 1956. The photos with threadwork and the Chinese/ Chinese-American history parts were very impactful. The imagery in these poems is beautiful and expansive. This is one of those collections that will get better with each read and I definitely plan on rereading it at some point.

My favorite line from this collection:

"But I learned that when grief abandons its body, what's left isn't what was there before."

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stayed inside the tree and wrote a poem since I didn’t have words I used my heat by the time I left the trunk it was dark in the trees I hadn’t become smaller in fact my thinking had unwound and grown in the forest small and large were the same

is history the same thing as story if story is made of language then what if language is made of hollow then what if language is made of money then what if language is made of whiteness then what when humans die language will outlive us if we live forever we outlive hope

My second book of poetry from this author, and inspired by a giant eucalyptus tree being cut down in front of her home, one that was dangerous if it fell, but the poet still feels the grief and deep sadness of such a being destroyed. I had a similar experience with a cottonwood tree that was not potentially harmful to anyone, just in the way, and I love the way these poems connects that with art and aging. There aren’t many poems about menopause, and the poet has said her intent is to make art of it. Her lens as an Chinese or Taiwanese American woman also informs the poems, not shying away from the harsh treatment this country heaps on people of Asian descent time and time again. Very thoughtful and important collection that remains in the mind for a long time.

Excerpts:

ODE TO JOY
I once believed in the gold because I was born excessive. Maybe we all are. But how can I write more like the gold lines near the bottom of the painting? How can I move radiance forward? Can language do what a painting does, evoke joy?

Just let the words fall in love. Let me go back to the beginning of this poem and let it drip down.

HEMLOCK, 1956
A wooden door in front of everything. A door on my country. A door in the lake. My poems prefer wooden hunting dogs. If I say there is a door on my heart in the poem, then there is. Now I can open this door. The door is a short door though. I must kneel down to crawl in, drag my body through with my wooden elbows. I bump into my wooden mother who is also crawling in my heart. She smiles so large that her suffering lights up the tunnel. I can now see my whole heart, not empty as I had thought.

A BOOK FROM THE SKY
Just a tall trunk remained, the height of the man who stood on top of it.

Paul Valéry said, I write half the poem. The reader writes the other half. I’ve crossed out the rest of this poem. Maybe every hole never needed to be filled.

TREES [STUDIES], 1944
To be alive is to accept perception but to use the perceived.

That the earth is a collage of the sky, the leaves, and its own grave. Things stay alive by eluding our perception.

I realized the stars made the leaves move, not the wind, a sixth object. Why does so much knowledge come at the end of something? I have so many last questions for the tree. Is there more than one afterlife? Can beauty be cut? What does he want? Does time move by shivering? Can death fall in love?

A MUSE
Dead trunks on their sides, surrounded by cones. Two lengths and widths of a body. Occasionally, the sun shined on the bark and it lit up loneliness.

So much radiance cut out of the tree that even with my eyes closed, I could see everything brightly. My melancholy had lost its needle.

Maybe we are our own muses. All my usual words caught fire. What remained—pomegranate, filament, flutter.

SEATED WOMAN
Thomas Hardy calls the men who cut down the tree two executioners. Then the moon needled into the new space it couldn’t before. Maybe the moon is the earth’s tiny mouth, which is why the earth is so hard for us to love. I look up at the eucalyptus in the backyard and watch it looking across the street to where the dead eucalyptus was. To be alive is to be in the middle of two things.

SPRING
I used to think that grief was heavy. But it is actually like an edge. It weighs nothing. It consumes itself to remain a line. On some days, when I am too heavy with joy, I divide myself into cubes and triangles so that I can once again be faceted.

MID DAY A square table just for me. In Emily Dickinson’s bedroom. My back to her dead mother in the other room. My front to her bed. Lace curtains remind me of the eyes everywhere. She lived until 55. Anne Truitt until 83. I am 52, prowling at the edge of revelation. How Truitt painted the bright red horizontally, then vertically to smooth out the eyes. Then sanded down the tears that came through. How she wanted what was left to be even, burnished alive. I imagine Dickinson’s head on the bed, tilted past death, her dashes in my retina. Who gets to speak, who gets to brush. Whose tendons of mind are visible. Who gets to scratch. Who gets to sand down thinking.

How strange to be in this room demanding awe. To sit down and write a poem where I could never have been. On the other side of the country, Chinatowns were being burned down. What am I to do with all these seams. History that keeps growing back. The women who are adjuncts to the world. What if I am no longer in awe of the stiff light. Expiring rims of time, smoothing only itself. I had an hour and now my time is up. She’s gone and she’s gone. Still I am here pressed between her and light, between the cross-talking ghosts.

[2raccoonsinacoat · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Tree of Knowledge” is a beautifully crafted and emotionally resonant collection that explores identity, loss, family, and Chang’s struggle with her own mind. Her writing is powerful and has such a quiet intensity that it’s impossible not to feel something.

Imagery of eucalyptus trees and the surrounding forests grounds the collection. I found these moments particularly evocative, but I struggled to fully grasp the deeper meanings of most of the poems.There are also themes of Chinese identity and cultural experience, complemented by mixed media elements, including photographs of rural Chinese communities. Again, the emotion was there and I really do appreciate Chang’s artistic range.

While I deeply admire the beauty of the language and the ambition here, I felt pretty distanced from its message. This could definitely just be a case of my own limited interpretive abilities, though. Still, this is a thoughtful and visually compelling work, and Chang is clearly a talented and impactful voice.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for providing an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Chang's Obit (love love!), but this is a miss for me. Giving it 3 stars here because there's some lovely imagery and the ideas are nice... I just cannot with lines breaking on personal pronouns and articles. When I scan *just* the end-words of a poem or poems to get a general sense of a poem's arc and am greeted with "of, the, of, with, to, to, my, our, in, on" in succession with little else of interest between, then I'd rather just have the wonderful prose poetry of Obit back. I'd rather return to that collection. I'd, honestly, rather take up prose in general on the topic of the town of Eureka. What are we doing as poets if not taking advantage of one of the premier aspects of our art??

[Victoria Martynko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an incredible poet. I find that focal point of the eucalyptus tree being cut down was so effective and grounding among the complex imagery that jumps between famous paintings and the Chinese American diaspora. I can’t wait to reread this and see what new meanings arise from the works.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Victoria Chang is on a heater right now. And her books are beautiful objects.

[Marc Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Video review https://youtu.be/COVxt3CD_tU

Prompted by the removal of trees from her street a meditation on nature, loss, grief etc. Great stuff

[Alexa Harbaugh · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m actually astounded at how well liked this collection is

[ReadinWithSteven · Rating 5 out of 5]

a perfect addition to the Chang catalogue. she might be at her most personal in this collection, allowing her distinct style to solidify and develop alongside her changing body and life. what works best in here is Chang's commitment to the trees, and some spine-chilling personifications that emotionally reached me, as well as her visual artworks and choices of poetic form. I tabbed so many pages and I was inspired every second I was reading.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this collection to be a much more challenging read than Chang's last (With My Back to the World), which I looooved so much. Some of it seemed very familiar and in the Chang "routine" so to speak--for example: the majority of the poems either are ekphrastic or give off that vibe, and I believe all of the poems in sections 1 and 3 are written in couplets. But the vibe feels really different to me. And that's without even talking about section 2 and what I think of as the "between" poems--the little snippets that are paired with embroidery.

Ok so section 1 = I did not love. It was a real struggle. I felt lost and kindof dumb.
Section 2 = completely different format, a very very long, almost never-ending, stream of consciousness poem that goes back and forth in time, in place, in feeling, in ideas. and until I read it in an interview, I had no inkling at all that most of the lines are 10 syllables long. I thought this poem was really cool, but there were also times I just got lost between pages.
Section 3 = LOVED. I don't know why or what changed, but I loved section 3 from the first poem to the last. "Tree of Knowledge, No. 7B" and "Untitled, 1970" were my very favorites but really they were all sooooo goooooood.

And then there's the between poems. Scattered throughout the book, every few pages, including NUMEROUS TIMES in the middle of Section 2 thus splitting that poem up, which definitely made it even harder to keep track of what was happening, are these little pairings:
1) a historical photograph of Chinese workers in the early 1900s, mostly I believe in and around Eureka California, but not all, that are then embroidered on with red thread by Chang, and
2) tiny 10-20 line poems, printed in red text.
I thought the embroidery on the photos was so cool and interesting, and the little snippet poems had some really cool images and language... but I don't think I ever really understood what was happening, why they're scattered throughout, what the embroidery is supposed to be saying, etc. Also they're not even included in the table of contents! It's like they're... secret? decorative? an addendum not to be mentioned? I have yet to figure it out, and since this is a library book, I may never know. Heh.

What a smart, challenging collection. How lucky to get to read and ponder this.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Tree of Knowledge, Victoria Chang builds a collection in which image functions as both entry point and return. The book opens with an archival photograph, one of many threaded throughout, where the speaker declares, “I am borrowed, / a tax of / salt water and / sand. / A citizen of / injury” (“Woman in Eureka”), situating the work within inheritance and fracture.

From this origin, the felling of a eucalyptus tree becomes the collection’s central axis, its absence refracting across poems that engage art, language, and memory. Chang’s attention to perception grounds the work’s associative movement. In “Woman Writing,” she renders the imperceptible audible, insisting that “trees…begin to scream, little / vibrations we can’t hear,” a line that reorients the reader toward what lies beneath surface understanding.

“Eureka,” one of the collection’s most consequential poems, extends this inquiry into history, confronting the 1885 expulsion of Chinese Americans with restraint that resists spectacle. The poem accumulates rather than resolves, allowing absence to remain visible.

While the collection’s recursive structure can at times feel abstract, its repetitions ultimately deepen its emotional and intellectual impact, returning the reader to the recognition that “No one tells you that suffering is a form” (“Red Tree, 1976”). For readers of contemporary poetry, Tree of Knowledge offers a rigorous, five-star experience, one that rewards close attention and lingers well beyond the final page.

[Brice Montgomery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Victoria Chang's work has been such a balm since I first read Dear Memory and Obit years ago, and Tree of Knowledge is another achingly gorgeous addition to her canon.

In a way, if you've read one of Chang's books, you've read them all, but that's the point. She circles questions of death, memory, and the inadequacy of language in almost every project, and she's no closer to good answers for any of the problems that plague her.

What's truer to life than that?

For readers on Chang's wavelength, however, Tree of Knowledge will feel far from redundant. As with each of her books, she finds new ways to reiterate the impossibility of saying anything new. Her speaker enters into conversation with other artists—mostly visual—and grieves the fraying distinctions of easy binaries.

In "Self-Portrait," we read:

. . .Perhaps the
only thing we inherit is desire. And despair is just too
much desire.

Likewise, in "Red Tree, 1976," we see:

At least half of our grief for others is grieving
our own deaths. To acknowledge death too
often isn't too much grief. It's too much desire
to be commemorated.

These are poems with a palpable angst, and there's no catharsis for readers searching for an answer. For those who just wish to know others share their searching isolation, Tree of Knowledge will be a book to revisit again and again through every season.

[Mihiret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Victoria Chang's poetry collections are impressively different from each other--they even look different as bound collections because the form and shape of her poems change from volume to volume. The visual effect of the poem matters even if the poem appears at first glance to be a familiar column or collection of couplets. What they share is a a certain quiet willingness to sit with the problem (poetic, personal, or historic) and look at it from multiple angles, circling back and turning the idea or the image again. There are trees and their absences throughout all these poems, sometimes personally a mulberry tree that is present and absent, a whole tree, a dying tree, a stump, or a gap, and sometimes a multitude of tree like those bearing witness in the long poem "Eureka" which explores the 1885 expulsion of Chinese Americans from Eureka, CA. There are also people and their absences (again personal losses, but also larger-scale historical losses). It's a collection that rewards rereading, for individual poems, for the resonances throughout the volume, and for the echoes readers will feel in their own lives.

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for my free earc in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are all my own.

[Ally Ang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to FSG Books & NetGalley for the ARC.

"When I work on something now, I have // two things in mind. The first is to balance the living / and the dead. The second is to make it more alive." -"EUCALYPTUS, 1940"

This is, in my opinion, the best Victoria Chang book since Obit. The way Chang weaves together personal, historical, and natural (as in pertaining to nature) loss & memory is brilliant. Her reflections on aging, motherhood, and the long-term afterlife of grief were also quite moving. Chang is a poet I study when I'm having trouble ending a poem--I don't know how she does it, but she always writes these mic-drop poem endings that stop me in my tracks but don't feel overdetermined and still leave the door open to wonder and discovery. She is also a poet I turn to when I want to sharpen my relationship to image, both in the sense of ekphrasis and in the recurring images that haunt this book. I got a lot out of reading this book.

[Tina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to read more poetry so I was eager to read Tree of Knowledge by Victoria Chang because I’ve never read her books before and I loved this book! I loved the through line of trees in these poems. Some of the trees mentioned are hemlock and eucalyptus. I enjoyed how these poems connect with nature in a way that’s reflective. It was interesting the artwork included that was created by the author using historical photos and what looked liked mixed media. Artists are also referenced in these poems such as Rothko, Twombly and Hilma af Klint. Several lines stood out to me which I highlighted in the book and they provoked philosophical questions about the meaning of poetry and life. I especially loved the introspection of being Chinese. I’m very curious to read this author’s other books now!

Thank you to the publisher via NetGalley for my ARC!

[Emily Zhao]

A must-read if you like poetry and paintings, but as a person who tends to enjoy neither, this was sort of a miss for me 😅 but there were definitely a few poems that landed and I got to learn more about the 1885 expulsion of Chinese Americans in Eureka, which I knew nothing about. Overall, I wish Chang provided a bit more context in her pieces, as I felt it would have strengthened my connection with her.


“Melancholy is to remember that the houses were wonderful even though the childhood wasn't. Depression is to remember that the houses and the childhood weren't wonderful, but to think they were.”

[Ambi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this book blew me away! Victoria Chang’s poetry has a cyclical nature to it that draws you in deeper and deeper with each rotation. The way Chang can turn a single image into several vastly different poems is stunning. I particularly loved the artwork by the author, and if you also are an art lover, you will enjoy the references to paintings in many of her poems. Tree of Knowledge was a fantastic introduction to Chang’s work and I’m looking forward to picking up more of her poetry.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC!

[Grace Oeth · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

this collection took me a long time to get through, and I think it's because I'm not the biggest fan of free form prose poetry. I think you have to really do it right for me to remain interested, and with this one I felt there were a lot of moving parts and they would sometimes connect and then veer off in a completely different direction. I thought the poet's work was more resonant in her collection OBIT, where she could roam with her exploratory style in an interesting format that gave the poems structure. I did really like the embroidery art that was included in this collection, however.

[Wendy Wisner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was blown away by this book. It consists mostly of ekphrastic poems and touches on themes of grief, parenting, lineage, intergenerational trauma, and midlife/menopause. What struck me is that as I was reading, each line felt completely fresh and surprising. I never knew where the poems were going to go and that truly took my breath away. The images and pathos in these poems are just so particular – imaginative, textured, evocative.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced reader copy.

[Dipali · Rating 4 out of 5]

** A copy of Is Tree of Knowledge was provided by the publisher and Net Galley in exchange for an honest review **

Victoria Chang remains one of my favourite poets and writers today. Tree of Knowledge is a beautiful collection of poetry about grief, trauma, loss, memory and identity. With every collection by Chang, not only do I feel a lot, I also end up learning so much about art and history.

[Sara Shocks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I underlined many lines! Not my favorite Chang in part because I was too lazy to look up the referenced paintings. Poems I starred while reading: "Trees [Studies], 1944," "Motherhood," "Woman in Blue," "Woman in Green," "Head of a Girl," "Mid Day," "Eureka," "Red Tree, 1976," "Tree of Knowledge, No. 7A," and "The Cloud of Unknowing, 2019"

[aims · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why does so much knowledge // come at the end of something?

Poems that open and open and open, demand a return, will lodge themselves in your mind if you permit. This book is Chang's ars poetica and ours: a tree with a heart in its center.

[Sarah Horner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Victoria Chang is a fascinating thinker and that comes through so clearly in her poems. This collection is astonishing - I feel like I could spend an hour analyzing each individual poem, seeing where they lead me in my own creative practice. Will for sure be turning to these poems for inspiration.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tough read. The quality is apparent, but the subject matter is deep...and personal. This collection is a little dark. That's on me, not the poet. You might enjoy it. You might not. It's top notch writing regardless.

[Michael Chowning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Victoria Chang is a goddamn miracle.

[Mark Filipovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

see-through, separation, hand, unknotted, brooch, gone, formlessness, desire, hillside, dichroic

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible… spanning personal and diaspora history & grief. Spare and heavy. The future is blue-green and ruin…

[Angry.Sad.Motivated · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love some of these a lot; artwork/visual imagery included is lovely. Couplet is a tough form but used well here - but I struggle with the centered poem.

[Becky Loader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chang is a powerful writer.