The History of Anonymity: Poems

by Jennifer Chang

This debut collection of vivid, lyrical poems explores the emotional landscape of childhood without confession and without straightforward narrative. Chang sweeps together myth and fairy tale, skirting the edges of events to focus on the psychological tenor of experience: the underpinnings of identity and the role of nature in both constructing and erasing a self. From the edge of the ocean, where things constantly shift and dissolve, through "the forest's thick, / where the trees meet the dark," to an imaginary cliffside town of fog, this book makes a journey both natural and psychological, using experiments in language and form to capture the search for personhood and place.

Genres: Poetry, Womens

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 29, 2008

About the author

Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New Republic, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Sewanee Writers' Conference, The MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo.

Critical Mass Interview:
http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/S...

Boston Review:
http://bostonreview.net/BR34.2/chang_...

First Book Interviews:
http://firstbookinterviews.blogspot.c...

Cortland Review Book Review:
http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/3...

Poetry Daily:
http://poems.com/poem.php?date=13702
http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14001

Reviews

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chang's work here feels so particularly intimate for me that I want to bury it in a secret place to come find it again in twenty, forty years. So beautiful, touching, greedy and loving, wrought with family relations and the inward games one must decipher to ascertain the whereabouts and positions of love.

[Charlotte Pence · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intimate voice, one who whispers in the ear instead of shouting from rooftops, these poems use space, silence, and fresh language in ways that distinguish them from many contemporary poems. And to find a collection of such work is even more unusual.
If there is a fault to this first book, it links into one of the book’s strengths, and that is the lyrical “I” that dominates the work and speaks directly to the reader—an “I” to “I.” Because of the dominance of this “I,” it relies on the reader’s connection to the persona: the search, the voice, the poetic strategies. But if these concerns are the reader’s concerns, the result is a moving encounter with a new voice. Overall, these poems are not unified by a narrative arc, yet a layering is evident here as each poem unfolds and adds pressure to the next poem similar to the pressure of diving deeper and deeper underwater. As Chang writes in the end to her first poem that feels like a struggle the rest of the book continues: “I swam to not drown: / the difference between the two / is one stroke.”

[Cornelio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another one of those reads where one great poem alone could've made me give this book 5 stars, but this book doesn't stop at just one for sure. Chang's poems have a musicality that carry them so far to make you believe you are reading musical notes, not words. Her mastery employ of distinctive words are apt for the moment, never feels forced, but still surprise and delight. Her poems suggest those great qualities of trance and spontaneity, a free voice unburdened by rules, yet one can't help but admire and be jealous of the craft and form that subtly give heft at the same time.

"No one sees how night fades you.

Not the stars' lambent sparks—

born blind, lights years gone.
Even you don't see

the black line of yourself,

the vanishing

you slowly come to, a shadow gift…"

from AND THE NIGHT ILLUMINATED THE NIGHT

[Ross Williamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love this book. i liked the second half, unction, more than the first -- her language and abstraction are very pretty, but there's no comparison to the genuine emotion in "unction". beautiful, beautiful poetry.

[Bella Che · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chang’s poetry reminds me of T.S. Eliott’s Four Quartets. Her voice is musical, sentimental, mesmerizing, mystical, melodious yet powerful, thundering, dissolving.... It sounds to me like a muffled cry on a sunny summer day. You see a beautiful lotus in the pond, you see the reflection of blue sky and white clouds, but in a split second, you see watery eyes of a dying sister, you feel the pressing heaviness of dark clouds and thunderous storms, you feel your heart is pounding louder and louder, for the pond is not a pond, but a lake, an ocean... Where am I? Am I too lost in my own memory?

[Mills College Library]

811.6 C4564h 2008

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This lyric poetry was hypnotic. I read almost the whole thing out loud.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biased reviewer: my book's in this series. Doesn't stop me from liking it. You will feel like a body and a mind tumbled smooth as seaglass when you read the title track, identities sloughing off, cares of being wearing down. Chang knows what she's doing. Take the ride.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Chang has created a mythic space filled with puddles and mothers and oceans and stilts? maybe even stilts. This book pushes on and on through the subject of family dynamic and personal identity. It is assuredly not a bulbed tulip that will not bloom. It is erupted!

[Boxcar]

VQR Poetry Series

[ryo narasaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

looking forward to re-reading and re-re-reading. to consider: Sister, Mother, and their relationships with water and reflection - rejecting, searching for, and succumbing to each.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fabulous collection.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine work. I love the irony of the title.