The History of Anonymity - (VQR Poetry) by Jennifer Chang (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

In this remarkable first collection, Jennifer Chang writes, 'You don't see the black line of yourself, the vanishing you slowly come to.' Spare yet sinuous; haunted, visionary; these poems continually enact encounters between what vanishes and what burns in the body and mind.

--Arthur Sze "author of Quipu"

These poems seem to exist inside the natural world, as if sea and tree were garments that the poet wears as a first skin. The open form therefore allows for ample movement and air, while she tries to shuck off primary human relationships in favor of this first one. The poems are open, easy to read and pleasurable to feel as expressions.

--Fanny Howe "author of Lyrics"

[Chang] is at her best and boldest in raw poems . . . The final section continues the narrative of the victimized child, her sister, and her mother, with frankness and a refreshing lack of melodrama.

--Publishers Weekly

Chang's collection is prone to return to mind. It leaves you with a sense of its polish, the sharp observations ("Be silent as the 'e' in house") hidden in the smooth surface of the words, which seem to sit like the title: burned into a mythic landscape, wide as the sea. Even as you read, it both approaches and recedes.

--C-ville Weekly

About the Author

Jennifer Chang's poems have appeared in "Kenyon Review," "New England Review," "New Republic," "Boston Review," and other publications. She cochairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a nonprofit organization that promotes Asian American poetry.