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With My Back to the World: Poems
A new collection of poetry inspired by the work of Agnes Martin, exploring topics of feminism, art, depression, and grief, by the author of the prizewinning collection Obit .
Yesterday I slung my depression on my back and went to the museum. I only asked four attendants where the Agnes painting was and the fifth one knew. I walked into the room and saw it right away. From afar, it was a large white square.
With My Back to the World engages with the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin, the celebrated abstract artist, in ways that open up new modes of expression, expanding the scope of what art, poetry, and the human mind can do. Filled with surprise and insight, wit and profundity, the book explores the nature of the self, of existence, life and death, grief and depression, time and space. Strikingly original, fluidly strange, Victoria Chang’s new collection is a book that speaks to how we see and are seen.
Yesterday I slung my depression on my back and went to the museum. I only asked four attendants where the Agnes painting was and the fifth one knew. I walked into the room and saw it right away. From afar, it was a large white square.
With My Back to the World engages with the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin, the celebrated abstract artist, in ways that open up new modes of expression, expanding the scope of what art, poetry, and the human mind can do. Filled with surprise and insight, wit and profundity, the book explores the nature of the self, of existence, life and death, grief and depression, time and space. Strikingly original, fluidly strange, Victoria Chang’s new collection is a book that speaks to how we see and are seen.
- GenresPoetryMental HealthArt
112 pages, Hardcover
First published April 2, 2024
About the author
Victoria Chang
26 books350 followersVictoria Chang's books of poems, With My Back to the World, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2024. 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.
Her website is www.victoriachangpoet.com. Twitter: @VChangPoet.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
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May 4, 2024I really enjoyed and flew through the first half of this collection, but the last 50% felt very repetitive and dense. There were a few poems and lines that I really enjoyed, but for a lot of this one, I didn’t understand what the poems were saying (which doesn’t mean it’s not good poetry, just that that’s why it’s not a perfect collection for me personally). I did really appreciate the themes in this one and I enjoyed how this collection was based off of different artwork and how each piece of art was described.
Fave poems:
Untitled #3 1994, summer 1964, buds 1959, falling blue 1963.
Fave quotes:
“In this room, I’m trying to paint in lowercase. I am trying to draw a woman’s heartbeat, not the heart. “
- Aspiration, 1960
“depression is a group of parallel lines that want to touch, but never can.”
- untitled, 1961
“how even happiness is made by writing something down, then leaving it exposed for all to see. Is it possible to be seen, but not be looked at?”
- the island, 1961
“is it possible to feel happiness while on the line? Or is the present just the pointed tip of death’s sword?”
- drift of summer, 1964
“once I write the word depression, it is no longer myfeeling. It is now on view for others to walk toward, lean in, and peer at.”
- play, 1966
Fave poems:
Untitled #3 1994, summer 1964, buds 1959, falling blue 1963.
Fave quotes:
“In this room, I’m trying to paint in lowercase. I am trying to draw a woman’s heartbeat, not the heart. “
- Aspiration, 1960
“depression is a group of parallel lines that want to touch, but never can.”
- untitled, 1961
“how even happiness is made by writing something down, then leaving it exposed for all to see. Is it possible to be seen, but not be looked at?”
- the island, 1961
“is it possible to feel happiness while on the line? Or is the present just the pointed tip of death’s sword?”
- drift of summer, 1964
“once I write the word depression, it is no longer myfeeling. It is now on view for others to walk toward, lean in, and peer at.”
- play, 1966
February 16, 2024
This totally rocked my world. Everything shouldn't have worked for me (i don't like prose poems generally, or ekphrasis and I've literally never heard of the artist that this book is based on) but it blew my mind. bought a copy for my shelf, going to read again at some point and highlight to death.
"Tears do not come from the heart. They do not come from the eyes, or the body. They come from outside of us like time, from one large repository, which is why we cry when other people cry. In this way, tears are communal. We depend on each other for our sadness.” -- Summer, 1964
"Tears do not come from the heart. They do not come from the eyes, or the body. They come from outside of us like time, from one large repository, which is why we cry when other people cry. In this way, tears are communal. We depend on each other for our sadness.” -- Summer, 1964
April 2, 2024
Thank you to FSG & NetGalley for the copy! Victoria Chang never fails to stun me into disbelief. I remember years ago reading her 2020 collection, Obit, a sorrowful ode to her woes in the wake of her mother's passing. While With My Back to the World is comparably melancholic, its lamenting feels far more languid and almost unrelenting. There are still those tinges of grief that fray at the edges of her poetry, but depression this time around is more apparent, made sour by its unyielding pace, its unending drawl.
There's a need for realization in the world, for Chang to feel existent and understood by others outside of her own perceptions. In "Untitled #5, 1998", she writes:
"What if I've spent my whole life wanting to be seen? In that way, I've wanted to be the painting, not the painter. / But I am the painter. Even now, I walk outside at night just so the sky can see me one more time."
But there also seems to be this sense of inevitability in her poems, a teetering between surrendering to it or watching it play out from the sidelines. Like in "Play, 1996", she asks:
"Is it possible to write down how we feel without betraying our feelings? Once I write the word depression, it is no longer my feeling. It is now on view for others to walk toward, lean in, and peer at."
Constantly, I feel this slight of resignation in Chang's recent work. Her words have never felt gentle to begin with, but this time around, there's less of a fervor in her agony, and more of a submission to it that feels devotional. Something that Chang has always left me with is this sense that grief is so unselfish but also the most self-indulgent feeling we can have.
5/5 - every year with something new from Chang is a wonderful year
There's a need for realization in the world, for Chang to feel existent and understood by others outside of her own perceptions. In "Untitled #5, 1998", she writes:
"What if I've spent my whole life wanting to be seen? In that way, I've wanted to be the painting, not the painter. / But I am the painter. Even now, I walk outside at night just so the sky can see me one more time."
But there also seems to be this sense of inevitability in her poems, a teetering between surrendering to it or watching it play out from the sidelines. Like in "Play, 1996", she asks:
"Is it possible to write down how we feel without betraying our feelings? Once I write the word depression, it is no longer my feeling. It is now on view for others to walk toward, lean in, and peer at."
Constantly, I feel this slight of resignation in Chang's recent work. Her words have never felt gentle to begin with, but this time around, there's less of a fervor in her agony, and more of a submission to it that feels devotional. Something that Chang has always left me with is this sense that grief is so unselfish but also the most self-indulgent feeling we can have.
5/5 - every year with something new from Chang is a wonderful year
April 28, 2024
"There is no hope in shapes. There is just the line and the sound of its scratch as it crosses out memory. Perhaps it's not memory we're trying to capture but everything instead of it."
January 13, 2024
A stunningly beautiful collection of ekphrastic poetry that tackles themes around grief, loss, depression, family, and the limits of language.
This latest collection by Victoria Chang is inspired by, and in conversation with, the abstract minimalist art of Agnes Martin. Each poem takes its title from one of her paintings, and I found myself eagerly flipping between Google and each poem to explore the painting, then think about the connection between Martin's and Chang's pieces. Chang also prefaces some of the text poems with more avant-garde artistic treatments of her poem that you read on the following page, from blocking it into grids (like Agnes Martin), to drawing curlicue squiggles across the lines, to completely blacking it out. This added another dimension of appreciation for me.
Like so many good poems, these invite you to read and savor them one at a time, rather than quickly moving to the next. I found myself highlighting and annotating many lines to remember later. A few standout poems that I will return to again and again:
Buds, 1959
Grass, 1967
Falling Blue, 1963
The Tree, 1964
Fiesta, 1985
Today (a masterpiece of a long poem)
Untitled #5, 1998
Definitely check out this collection; it's short but packs a punch. Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This latest collection by Victoria Chang is inspired by, and in conversation with, the abstract minimalist art of Agnes Martin. Each poem takes its title from one of her paintings, and I found myself eagerly flipping between Google and each poem to explore the painting, then think about the connection between Martin's and Chang's pieces. Chang also prefaces some of the text poems with more avant-garde artistic treatments of her poem that you read on the following page, from blocking it into grids (like Agnes Martin), to drawing curlicue squiggles across the lines, to completely blacking it out. This added another dimension of appreciation for me.
Like so many good poems, these invite you to read and savor them one at a time, rather than quickly moving to the next. I found myself highlighting and annotating many lines to remember later. A few standout poems that I will return to again and again:
Buds, 1959
Grass, 1967
Falling Blue, 1963
The Tree, 1964
Fiesta, 1985
Today (a masterpiece of a long poem)
Untitled #5, 1998
Definitely check out this collection; it's short but packs a punch. Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
April 19, 2024
With My Back to the World ✨ Victoria Chang
This little lovely book has revived my love of poetry. I've loved poetry on and off for years, but as someone who never deeply studied poetry or has higher education in literature, I felt like I was never "smart enough" to "get" poetry, especially since even though I LOVE reading, I never did great in English class 😅
I felt like Chang had words for everyone in here and I loved the theme of art and words intertwining throughout the book.
I didn't understand everything, but thats why I love art: you take what you can from it, and everyone gets a little something different.
Definitely not the easiest place to start if you're new to poetry, but if you're a lover of art and beautifully written words, I'd definitely check this one out:)
Thank you @fsgbooks for this copy
This little lovely book has revived my love of poetry. I've loved poetry on and off for years, but as someone who never deeply studied poetry or has higher education in literature, I felt like I was never "smart enough" to "get" poetry, especially since even though I LOVE reading, I never did great in English class 😅
I felt like Chang had words for everyone in here and I loved the theme of art and words intertwining throughout the book.
I didn't understand everything, but thats why I love art: you take what you can from it, and everyone gets a little something different.
Definitely not the easiest place to start if you're new to poetry, but if you're a lover of art and beautifully written words, I'd definitely check this one out:)
Thank you @fsgbooks for this copy
December 6, 2023
I really enjoyed this collection. These poems are in constant conversation with Agnes Martin's paintings and it's cool how Victoria uses those paintings as a springboard to launch her own ideas. I've never seen poetry do that before.
Each poem is named after an Agnes painting and it was fun to google the paintings while reading. Some poems are formatted in grids like the paintings which is cool. There are few line breaks in the poetry, most are blocks of text that look like prose. This isn't a bad thing, and I didn't mind it.
Each poem is named after an Agnes painting and it was fun to google the paintings while reading. Some poems are formatted in grids like the paintings which is cool. There are few line breaks in the poetry, most are blocks of text that look like prose. This isn't a bad thing, and I didn't mind it.
April 29, 2024
Seeing art is to converse with one’s deepest self. After too much art one is overwhelmed and can barely react. This happens when one feels happy or one is depressed. Seen art is a way to deal with depression, and to let is speak. However, at one point there is too much of ourselves on what we see. At that moment, we often step back and let our minds breathe. Victoria Chang’s conversations with the work of Agnes Martin delves into this entire experience.
April 10, 2024
Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC to review!
3 stars!
I loved how this included some sort of mixed media for the poems before revealing them
Very different when used and I really liked it. The poems themselves weren't my taste hut I enjoyed the concept and execution.
3 stars!
I loved how this included some sort of mixed media for the poems before revealing them
Very different when used and I really liked it. The poems themselves weren't my taste hut I enjoyed the concept and execution.
December 15, 2023
Thank you to Net Galley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I will preface this by noting that I have enjoyed everything I've read by this author. I always find something interesting, different, profound and thought-provoking. To date, this one is the most abstract and I'm sure there were ideas or passages I didn't completely understand; just as with Agnes Martin's art. After reading, I did look at a lot of Martin's art to understand the connection between the poems. Abstract art has always been difficult for me. Yet, these poems opened me to a new expression and a different way to understand the author's feelings of depression, loss, grief, self and existence. There is a beauty and emotion in everything she writes.
January 27, 2024
With My Back to the World, Victoria Chang
In her latest poetry book, With My Back to the World, Victoria Chang traces her reaction to abstract paintings, where she finds a communion in their recognition of the gaps between feeling and artistic expression, between emotion and language. This is not new territory for Chang – most of her poetry collections explore the adequacy or inadequacy of forms of any kind to express emotion fully and honestly. In OBIT, she used the physical columnar form of newspaper obituaries to contain, and to explode beyond, the emotions of grief and the experience of loss.
Here, she takes on a harder challenge, and is wildly inventive and exciting in her approach. Following Agnes Martin’s abstract art, she traces her own experience as a woman and an artist, and her experience of her father’s illness and death. The challenge is made harder because Agnes Martin’s artwork is unknown to most people who do not follow art closely and do not have access to galleries and museums. Martin’s work is abstract, based on repetition of lines or grids or dots, and the real impact of her art occurs when it is witnessed in person – the subtle brush work, the softly blurred lines in an apparently regular shape. The artwork’s subtleties, and scale, do not carry over well to printed reproductions. Unless you have seen Martin’s work in person at a gallery or museum, you really won’t “get” it. Chang’s attempt to give the reader some sense of the art, as she reacts with it or to it, includes naming poems with the title and year of a Martin piece, and having an imaginary dialogue with Martin as they look at the artwork together. That’s inventive, and pulls the reader in, but it also leaves the art and its impact, and the personality of Martin herself, unknown by the person reading the poetry. Chang complicates this even further by never telling the reader who the artist is – she mentions “Agnes” but there is nothing in the titles or intro to inform you the artist is Agnes Martin; you’ll need to deduce that from reviews and blurbs, and wonder how anyone figured it out. This adds a lot of work for the reader, and increases the ante for the poetry – will it be worth it?
I saw the blurbs and reviews mentioning Agnes Martin, and found an online documentary about her life and work. That added a good layer of depth to how I read Chang’s poems. Without that, I would not have sustained an interest in the poetry itself. Don’t get me wrong – it’s very good poetry, and there are images and lines that sparkle with insight and ask big questions. But tethering the whole thing to and being in dialogue with art and an artist that I can’t figure out is a really big ask of the reader, and would have left me exhausted and confused.
The poems themselves, per usual with Victoria Chang, are startling and insightful, veering rapidly from a huge personal grief into an observation about art in general, or Agnes Martin’s work in particular, and back again. That technique threads a needle, ever so skillfully, between deeply internal and hidden feelings and the artist’s need to express them, and really does stitch art and life together in a wonderful way. All the while, Chang sees how inadequate any art or language can be, and how an artist (and a woman) is always on the knife edge of wanting to be seen but not watched, not misunderstood. In The Islands, 1961, she asks: “Agnes left some lines uncovered on the borders, showing us how happiness is made. How even happiness is made by writing something down, then leaving it exposed for all to see. Is it possible to be seen, but not looked at?”
These philosophical battles about art, language, what is true or what is observed, what is exposed or not, the extra edge of being a woman, being a daughter – all make the poetry challenging, worthwhile, very intelligent, wonderfully creative, always fluid. This is a worthwhile poetry book—difficult, but definitely worthwhile.
Martin’s art is decidedly non-representational. She meant it to be experienced, responded to. She carefully avoided any representation, and went so far as to refuse to have titles of the artwork printed in a gallery catalogue – experience it, don’t read it, don’t try to figure out what it is, she might have said. If you haven’t seen Martin’s art but perhaps have seen a piece of Mark Rothko’s art, you’ll get it. I admire the courage and inventiveness of Victoria Chang in writing poetry – language! representation! nouns and verbs! – that uses such art as a launching pad. And in using the poetry and the art to navigate grief, feelings of inadequacy (what daughter doesn’t feel that?), sadness about her father’s death. The personal ache of the father’s death provides many of the moments the poetry reaches out to the reader.
The poetry collection plays with the ideas of art abstraction, showing the text of a poem overlaid with squiggles and made into an unreadable work of abstraction, and then providing the text of the poem. This constant back and forth keeps the reader immersed in the idea of abstract art, and the need to simply look at something and experience it before it can be read and understood. A few of the attempts to mirror a piece of art do not work so well – an example is Little Sister, where the art work is constructed of rows of dots formed by nails, and the poem reflecting that artwork is words broken up by regular dots, sort of like faux line-breaks. Lacking the texture, the physicalness, the starting contrast between material and title that the artwork holds, a poem broken up by dots just doesn’t bring the same effect. Other poems where, for example, Martin’s gridwork paintings are transformed into a poem with grids of phrases work much better (With My Back to the World, 1997).
The poems are at their best when Chang is simply doing what she does best – questioning, shaking grief loose by making it tangible in unexpected ways. In Untitled #10, 2002, she asks, “What happens if these aren’t pastoral or war poems? When I can feel the light I carry on my back but can’t see it or use it? // When sadness and language cast the same shadow. These six strips are the shadows of our blood, proving that every woman’s life can // be broken into and displayed.” She finishes that poem softly referring to both her parents’ deaths, then going back to the question of art: “Maybe our bodies never had a vanishing point, // so there will always be hunger. Even a woman’s life is trying to become more than the woman it represents.” Boom.
Thanks to #netgalley, and #fsg (#Farrar, Straus and Giroux) for the ARC.
In her latest poetry book, With My Back to the World, Victoria Chang traces her reaction to abstract paintings, where she finds a communion in their recognition of the gaps between feeling and artistic expression, between emotion and language. This is not new territory for Chang – most of her poetry collections explore the adequacy or inadequacy of forms of any kind to express emotion fully and honestly. In OBIT, she used the physical columnar form of newspaper obituaries to contain, and to explode beyond, the emotions of grief and the experience of loss.
Here, she takes on a harder challenge, and is wildly inventive and exciting in her approach. Following Agnes Martin’s abstract art, she traces her own experience as a woman and an artist, and her experience of her father’s illness and death. The challenge is made harder because Agnes Martin’s artwork is unknown to most people who do not follow art closely and do not have access to galleries and museums. Martin’s work is abstract, based on repetition of lines or grids or dots, and the real impact of her art occurs when it is witnessed in person – the subtle brush work, the softly blurred lines in an apparently regular shape. The artwork’s subtleties, and scale, do not carry over well to printed reproductions. Unless you have seen Martin’s work in person at a gallery or museum, you really won’t “get” it. Chang’s attempt to give the reader some sense of the art, as she reacts with it or to it, includes naming poems with the title and year of a Martin piece, and having an imaginary dialogue with Martin as they look at the artwork together. That’s inventive, and pulls the reader in, but it also leaves the art and its impact, and the personality of Martin herself, unknown by the person reading the poetry. Chang complicates this even further by never telling the reader who the artist is – she mentions “Agnes” but there is nothing in the titles or intro to inform you the artist is Agnes Martin; you’ll need to deduce that from reviews and blurbs, and wonder how anyone figured it out. This adds a lot of work for the reader, and increases the ante for the poetry – will it be worth it?
I saw the blurbs and reviews mentioning Agnes Martin, and found an online documentary about her life and work. That added a good layer of depth to how I read Chang’s poems. Without that, I would not have sustained an interest in the poetry itself. Don’t get me wrong – it’s very good poetry, and there are images and lines that sparkle with insight and ask big questions. But tethering the whole thing to and being in dialogue with art and an artist that I can’t figure out is a really big ask of the reader, and would have left me exhausted and confused.
The poems themselves, per usual with Victoria Chang, are startling and insightful, veering rapidly from a huge personal grief into an observation about art in general, or Agnes Martin’s work in particular, and back again. That technique threads a needle, ever so skillfully, between deeply internal and hidden feelings and the artist’s need to express them, and really does stitch art and life together in a wonderful way. All the while, Chang sees how inadequate any art or language can be, and how an artist (and a woman) is always on the knife edge of wanting to be seen but not watched, not misunderstood. In The Islands, 1961, she asks: “Agnes left some lines uncovered on the borders, showing us how happiness is made. How even happiness is made by writing something down, then leaving it exposed for all to see. Is it possible to be seen, but not looked at?”
These philosophical battles about art, language, what is true or what is observed, what is exposed or not, the extra edge of being a woman, being a daughter – all make the poetry challenging, worthwhile, very intelligent, wonderfully creative, always fluid. This is a worthwhile poetry book—difficult, but definitely worthwhile.
Martin’s art is decidedly non-representational. She meant it to be experienced, responded to. She carefully avoided any representation, and went so far as to refuse to have titles of the artwork printed in a gallery catalogue – experience it, don’t read it, don’t try to figure out what it is, she might have said. If you haven’t seen Martin’s art but perhaps have seen a piece of Mark Rothko’s art, you’ll get it. I admire the courage and inventiveness of Victoria Chang in writing poetry – language! representation! nouns and verbs! – that uses such art as a launching pad. And in using the poetry and the art to navigate grief, feelings of inadequacy (what daughter doesn’t feel that?), sadness about her father’s death. The personal ache of the father’s death provides many of the moments the poetry reaches out to the reader.
The poetry collection plays with the ideas of art abstraction, showing the text of a poem overlaid with squiggles and made into an unreadable work of abstraction, and then providing the text of the poem. This constant back and forth keeps the reader immersed in the idea of abstract art, and the need to simply look at something and experience it before it can be read and understood. A few of the attempts to mirror a piece of art do not work so well – an example is Little Sister, where the art work is constructed of rows of dots formed by nails, and the poem reflecting that artwork is words broken up by regular dots, sort of like faux line-breaks. Lacking the texture, the physicalness, the starting contrast between material and title that the artwork holds, a poem broken up by dots just doesn’t bring the same effect. Other poems where, for example, Martin’s gridwork paintings are transformed into a poem with grids of phrases work much better (With My Back to the World, 1997).
The poems are at their best when Chang is simply doing what she does best – questioning, shaking grief loose by making it tangible in unexpected ways. In Untitled #10, 2002, she asks, “What happens if these aren’t pastoral or war poems? When I can feel the light I carry on my back but can’t see it or use it? // When sadness and language cast the same shadow. These six strips are the shadows of our blood, proving that every woman’s life can // be broken into and displayed.” She finishes that poem softly referring to both her parents’ deaths, then going back to the question of art: “Maybe our bodies never had a vanishing point, // so there will always be hunger. Even a woman’s life is trying to become more than the woman it represents.” Boom.
Thanks to #netgalley, and #fsg (#Farrar, Straus and Giroux) for the ARC.
December 11, 2023
Thanks to NetGalley and FSG for the ARC!
Obit is my favorite collection of poetry, so I was beyond excited to get a chance to read Victoria Chang’s With My Back to the World, a project in conversation with the artwork of Agnes Martin. Like her past several collections, this is a book birthed by self-imposed constraints, but like its predecessors, knowledge of those parameters isn’t necessary for enjoyment.
Over her past several collections, Victoria Chang has become increasingly concerned with the intersection of visual art and poetry, with Dear Memory signaling a turning point in the poet’s apparent desire for language to be material, tangible enough to withstand the physical realities of life. In With My Back to the World, that idea reaches its full fruition.
Chang’s prior work has long been thematically concerned with the inadequacy of language, and that continues here through her engagement with Martin’s art. The artist's paintings generally favor symmetry, and these predictable patterns act as the perfect vessel for the book’s subject matter. The avoidance of novelty in favor of iteration mirrors the way people seek language to explain pain. Sometimes repetition is all we have. Furthermore, the artist’s minimalism offers a kind of kinship for Chang’s austere specificity. The poet has such a delicate touch here that it feels intuitive to watch her attempt to gridlock depression. For those who share her struggle, they know that the pain is often in its amorphous inexplicability.
If it had a shape, it could be held.
This is where the poems in this collection live—the space between experience and its cause, a desire to understand feelings more than their origin. As Chang writes in “Aspiration, 1960,”
I am trying to draw a woman’s heartbeat, not the heart. The sensation of being strangled, not the hands around my neck.
As these poems accumulate, their disinterest in causality begins to form another question through punctured aphorisms and collocations—what is the role of art in light of its insufficiency? Why do we persist when it cannot solve anything? It’s a question with personal stakes in this book. I remember a professor criticizing me for referring to a poet by name rather than saying “the speaker” because we shouldn’t assume that the voice is one in the same, but here, Chang repeatedly acknowledges that she will be recognized in her work, even when she would like to be invisible. She poses the question most transparently in “The Islands, 1961”:
Is it possible to be seen, but not looked at?
It’s never answered directly, but I think readers will leave the book with their own ideas.
Like she did in The Trees Witness Everything and Obit, Chang breaks from her book’s form only once and very intentionally. In part two of the three-part structure, she writes a heartbreaking day-by-day account of the days surrounding her father’s death. There are references to other poems in the collection here, so it still feels like it’s in conversation with the rest of the book, but I was more struck by how each of Victoria Chang’s projects are gradually coming more directly into dialogue with each other. This feels like an extension of Obit, not as redundancy but as its cathartic completion.
The same could be said for With My Back to the World as a whole. Victoria Chang is an artist who constantly reinvents herself to better articulate the impossibility of reinvention, and I feel so privileged to be able to read her work.
Obit is my favorite collection of poetry, so I was beyond excited to get a chance to read Victoria Chang’s With My Back to the World, a project in conversation with the artwork of Agnes Martin. Like her past several collections, this is a book birthed by self-imposed constraints, but like its predecessors, knowledge of those parameters isn’t necessary for enjoyment.
Over her past several collections, Victoria Chang has become increasingly concerned with the intersection of visual art and poetry, with Dear Memory signaling a turning point in the poet’s apparent desire for language to be material, tangible enough to withstand the physical realities of life. In With My Back to the World, that idea reaches its full fruition.
Chang’s prior work has long been thematically concerned with the inadequacy of language, and that continues here through her engagement with Martin’s art. The artist's paintings generally favor symmetry, and these predictable patterns act as the perfect vessel for the book’s subject matter. The avoidance of novelty in favor of iteration mirrors the way people seek language to explain pain. Sometimes repetition is all we have. Furthermore, the artist’s minimalism offers a kind of kinship for Chang’s austere specificity. The poet has such a delicate touch here that it feels intuitive to watch her attempt to gridlock depression. For those who share her struggle, they know that the pain is often in its amorphous inexplicability.
If it had a shape, it could be held.
This is where the poems in this collection live—the space between experience and its cause, a desire to understand feelings more than their origin. As Chang writes in “Aspiration, 1960,”
I am trying to draw a woman’s heartbeat, not the heart. The sensation of being strangled, not the hands around my neck.
As these poems accumulate, their disinterest in causality begins to form another question through punctured aphorisms and collocations—what is the role of art in light of its insufficiency? Why do we persist when it cannot solve anything? It’s a question with personal stakes in this book. I remember a professor criticizing me for referring to a poet by name rather than saying “the speaker” because we shouldn’t assume that the voice is one in the same, but here, Chang repeatedly acknowledges that she will be recognized in her work, even when she would like to be invisible. She poses the question most transparently in “The Islands, 1961”:
Is it possible to be seen, but not looked at?
It’s never answered directly, but I think readers will leave the book with their own ideas.
Like she did in The Trees Witness Everything and Obit, Chang breaks from her book’s form only once and very intentionally. In part two of the three-part structure, she writes a heartbreaking day-by-day account of the days surrounding her father’s death. There are references to other poems in the collection here, so it still feels like it’s in conversation with the rest of the book, but I was more struck by how each of Victoria Chang’s projects are gradually coming more directly into dialogue with each other. This feels like an extension of Obit, not as redundancy but as its cathartic completion.
The same could be said for With My Back to the World as a whole. Victoria Chang is an artist who constantly reinvents herself to better articulate the impossibility of reinvention, and I feel so privileged to be able to read her work.
April 1, 2024
5/5 ⭐️
A beautiful collection of poems that deal with topics such as depression, grief, death, and limits of language. I enjoyed the writing style of these poems, ekphrastic, as that is not something I have seen in the poetry collections I have read recently. I will be purchasing a physical copy of this collection because I wanted to highlight so many quotes and themes dealing with depression. The poetry titles are based on the painting titles by Agnes Martin and some contain graphics from said poems which I loved as it gave a hint as to what she wanted you to feel.
“Maybe they are one long string, made into small even humps. If I pull one end, my depression will flatten, but my words will also disappear.”
“I used to think depression was all around me, that I was within it. Now I see that it is always ahead of me. That it is in pieces, but it moves in a swarm.”
Release day April 2nd!
Thank you NetGalley for a complementary copy of this book from the publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in exchange for an honest review.
A beautiful collection of poems that deal with topics such as depression, grief, death, and limits of language. I enjoyed the writing style of these poems, ekphrastic, as that is not something I have seen in the poetry collections I have read recently. I will be purchasing a physical copy of this collection because I wanted to highlight so many quotes and themes dealing with depression. The poetry titles are based on the painting titles by Agnes Martin and some contain graphics from said poems which I loved as it gave a hint as to what she wanted you to feel.
“Maybe they are one long string, made into small even humps. If I pull one end, my depression will flatten, but my words will also disappear.”
“I used to think depression was all around me, that I was within it. Now I see that it is always ahead of me. That it is in pieces, but it moves in a swarm.”
Release day April 2nd!
Thank you NetGalley for a complementary copy of this book from the publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in exchange for an honest review.
April 9, 2024
When I read that these poems "engage with the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin," I immediately put in a request at the library, and was lucky that they had it available right away. Not that I'm any sort of expert on Martin -- don't know her writings at all, and I've only ever seen a handful of her paintings (but got to see a whole room of them last time I visited SFMOMA). Still, her work is compelling enough that I was curious about the poems, and I'm glad to report that the poems turned out to be compelling, too. I plan to check out some of the author's other books.
Side note: There is an errata sheet in this copy, because one of the poems was not set on the page properly. I was very impressed with the publisher (FSG) for including this, I don't imagine many publishers nowadays would spend the money or go to the bother. I realize everyone would be happier if the error had never occurred, I'm just glad they cared enough to include the corrected version.
Side note: There is an errata sheet in this copy, because one of the poems was not set on the page properly. I was very impressed with the publisher (FSG) for including this, I don't imagine many publishers nowadays would spend the money or go to the bother. I realize everyone would be happier if the error had never occurred, I'm just glad they cared enough to include the corrected version.
May 10, 2024
“Agnes must have wanted me to see innocence or happiness
when looking at this painting. But all I see is the gathering
of pink at the bottom. For every woman, there is a man who
is nearby. Every woman has asked a tree a question. If you
ask a tree too many questions, it will fall down. You can hear
a tree take its last breath, it sounds like gurgling. All the
answers are in the gurgling. A woman just shut a window
because of someone staring in. I can't look at the window
without thinking man. Or kidnap. Or knife. I prefer the words
of things I can't see, such as wind, now, exist. Is it possible to
separate a woman from her life? For a life to just be a life?
For the art to be down the road from the paint? Just once I
want to look in the mirror and wonder, What is that?”
when looking at this painting. But all I see is the gathering
of pink at the bottom. For every woman, there is a man who
is nearby. Every woman has asked a tree a question. If you
ask a tree too many questions, it will fall down. You can hear
a tree take its last breath, it sounds like gurgling. All the
answers are in the gurgling. A woman just shut a window
because of someone staring in. I can't look at the window
without thinking man. Or kidnap. Or knife. I prefer the words
of things I can't see, such as wind, now, exist. Is it possible to
separate a woman from her life? For a life to just be a life?
For the art to be down the road from the paint? Just once I
want to look in the mirror and wonder, What is that?”
December 30, 2023
** A copy of With My Back to the World was provided by the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review **
I think it's safe to say Victoria Chang is one of my favourite writers. I've read four books/collections by her and rated all of them five stars each! No one writes about/with/beside grief, love and depression as well as Victoria does! With My Back to the World is a collection of poems I took my time with but devoured at the same time. So many of the pieces resonated with me deeply and I've definitely found some new favourite lines and poems. Thought-provoking, moving, melancholic, and poignant, this collection is a beautiful triumph!
I think it's safe to say Victoria Chang is one of my favourite writers. I've read four books/collections by her and rated all of them five stars each! No one writes about/with/beside grief, love and depression as well as Victoria does! With My Back to the World is a collection of poems I took my time with but devoured at the same time. So many of the pieces resonated with me deeply and I've definitely found some new favourite lines and poems. Thought-provoking, moving, melancholic, and poignant, this collection is a beautiful triumph!
January 28, 2024
Victoria Chang's new poetry book is exciting to read. It's like entering an art gallery, where you not only take in the art but also marvel at the organization of what's on display. She includes many different kinds of forms here: erasure, prose poetry, rhymed couplets, and diary-type entries. Most of the poems are about loss, depression, and the process of art-making. Most of the time I was deeply moved by the poems, and others I felt lost and bewildered (but maybe that's the point). I always enjoy her poems whenever I read them, and will continue to seek out her work. I wouldn't be surprised to see this collection get many awards this year.
February 11, 2024
A fellow bookseller handed me a collection of Victoria Chang’s poetry a few years back and I’ve been smitten ever since. Her latest, ‘With My Back To The World’, is named after a painting done by artist Agnes Martin.
Chang often writes about sadness and grief, and some of Martin’s later works are named after emotional states as well. The way that Chang has paired her own grief and subsequent depression over the loss of her father, with thoughts and descriptions of Agnes Martin’s work as an artist is brilliant!
Their use of color, both literal and to describe emotions, just add beauty to this amazing work.
I can’t wait to see the finished copy when this book comes out!
Chang often writes about sadness and grief, and some of Martin’s later works are named after emotional states as well. The way that Chang has paired her own grief and subsequent depression over the loss of her father, with thoughts and descriptions of Agnes Martin’s work as an artist is brilliant!
Their use of color, both literal and to describe emotions, just add beauty to this amazing work.
I can’t wait to see the finished copy when this book comes out!
March 11, 2024
This is a very interesting collection. It is a very specific collection, as well, dealing with the paintings of Agnes Martin. The titles of poems are taken from the paintings that inspired them.
At times, the poems feel like art criticism. Sometimes they feel like confessions. Chang writes a lot within these poems about death and depression and grief, and how she relates these themes to the work of Agnes Martin.
It is a strange collection, and unique. There is something special about it, something intimate in the way we view Martin's work through Chang's poems. With My Back to the World is more than a collection of poems, it's an experience.
At times, the poems feel like art criticism. Sometimes they feel like confessions. Chang writes a lot within these poems about death and depression and grief, and how she relates these themes to the work of Agnes Martin.
It is a strange collection, and unique. There is something special about it, something intimate in the way we view Martin's work through Chang's poems. With My Back to the World is more than a collection of poems, it's an experience.
April 3, 2024
"To think, everyone will write one final word."
I believe my review will be a bit of an outlier, but here goes. I absolutely loved, was entranced by, and (ugly) cried to Victoria Chang's Obit - and I was expecting to have a similar experience to With My Back to the World, and while this was an objectively great collection, I did not feel the same pull I'm used to feeling when reading a Victoria Chang book. I enjoyed the first half of the book, but it personally felt like it dragged on towards the end.
Thank you NetGalley & Farrar, Straus and Giroux for allowing me to read With My Back to the World in exchange for an honest review!
I believe my review will be a bit of an outlier, but here goes. I absolutely loved, was entranced by, and (ugly) cried to Victoria Chang's Obit - and I was expecting to have a similar experience to With My Back to the World, and while this was an objectively great collection, I did not feel the same pull I'm used to feeling when reading a Victoria Chang book. I enjoyed the first half of the book, but it personally felt like it dragged on towards the end.
Thank you NetGalley & Farrar, Straus and Giroux for allowing me to read With My Back to the World in exchange for an honest review!
April 26, 2024
Absolutely one of the most powerful, brilliant, unforgettable collections of poetry I've ever read! Some quotes:
"Here the sky is made of nothing."
"The sky isn't a threshold because it reveals everything, there is nowhere to hide.
All the syntax is there."
"There was never joy in life,
only varying lengths of sadness, in
between the cows, birds, and our looking up."
"You'd never know the planet is dying. Here, the clouds
have holes in them and the deer are more etched
with shadow."
"Today the river is in crisis, no
horizon dares to go near it. Today
my father is in a small jar."
The entire collection is underlined. GET A COPY! It could change your life!
"Here the sky is made of nothing."
"The sky isn't a threshold because it reveals everything, there is nowhere to hide.
All the syntax is there."
"There was never joy in life,
only varying lengths of sadness, in
between the cows, birds, and our looking up."
"You'd never know the planet is dying. Here, the clouds
have holes in them and the deer are more etched
with shadow."
"Today the river is in crisis, no
horizon dares to go near it. Today
my father is in a small jar."
The entire collection is underlined. GET A COPY! It could change your life!
April 2, 2024
Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC!
I'm a huge fan of Victoria Chang's poetry and each collection she writes is something to savor. Each continue to linger in my mind. I was so happy when I was approved for this eARC. Victoria Chang deftly writes about depression, life, relationships, and grief with such care and precision in this latest ekphrastic poetry collection, which is inspired by and in conversation with the abstract minimalist art of Agnes Martin. I was amazed, once again, with how this collection was written and put together. I can't wait for the next book by Chang!
I'm a huge fan of Victoria Chang's poetry and each collection she writes is something to savor. Each continue to linger in my mind. I was so happy when I was approved for this eARC. Victoria Chang deftly writes about depression, life, relationships, and grief with such care and precision in this latest ekphrastic poetry collection, which is inspired by and in conversation with the abstract minimalist art of Agnes Martin. I was amazed, once again, with how this collection was written and put together. I can't wait for the next book by Chang!
April 22, 2024
"With My Back to the World engages with the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin, the celebrated abstract artist, in ways that open up new modes of expression, expanding the scope of what art, poetry, and the human mind can do. Filled with surprise and insight, wit and profundity, these poems explore the nature of the self, existence, life and death, grief and depression, time and space. Strikingly original, fluidly strange, Victoria Chang's new collection speaks to how we see and are seen."
January 24, 2024
ARC given by NetGalley for Honest Review
A delicate and lovingly written collection of ekphrastic poetry. Chang writes poems inspired by the works of artist Agnes Martin while weaving in themes of grief, womanhood, and human connection. The collection boasts interesting form and erasure/blackout poems, along with rich metaphorical prose. A really lovely read.
My favorite poems are: "Summer, 1964", "Buds, 1959", "Untitled IX, 1982", and "Untitled, 2004."
A delicate and lovingly written collection of ekphrastic poetry. Chang writes poems inspired by the works of artist Agnes Martin while weaving in themes of grief, womanhood, and human connection. The collection boasts interesting form and erasure/blackout poems, along with rich metaphorical prose. A really lovely read.
My favorite poems are: "Summer, 1964", "Buds, 1959", "Untitled IX, 1982", and "Untitled, 2004."
February 15, 2024
Victoria Chang is an inventive poet and I read everything she writes. This book is full of grief and I could only read a few pages at a poem. Then I needed to go outside and breathe before continuing. The backbone of the book is based on the artwork of Agnes Martin. Chang dialogues with her dead father, her children, and Martin's work throughout the book. A particularly unusual memoir about grieving your parents, and wondering how to continue into the future.
January 31, 2024
ARC- “With my back to the world” is a stark telling of depression and life in poetry. Its use of art as a motif, lines and shapes and angles telling stories is beautiful and expertly manifests a visual world for the reader. The long form poem central to this book is masterful in its day to day depiction of mourning, it has stuck with me as if it’s my journey too.
April 10, 2024
Right after I posted that photo of the 4 poetry collections FSG so kindly sent me, I grabbed ‘With My Back to the World’ by Victoria Chang and curled up to read. I really loved this collection and the use of Agnes Martin’s paintings as a way of exploring the authors own grief, depression, and outlook on life.
The middle section which focused on loss really touched me, this theme of mourning someone you loved and unpacking the ways they loved or didn’t love you and trying to make sense of it. It’s simple and complicated all at once and so beautifully drawn.
I highly recommend this one, very good.
The middle section which focused on loss really touched me, this theme of mourning someone you loved and unpacking the ways they loved or didn’t love you and trying to make sense of it. It’s simple and complicated all at once and so beautifully drawn.
I highly recommend this one, very good.
May 2, 2024
i love victoria chang & i love agnes martin so picking this up was a no-brainer. what i didn't expect was an achingly compassionate examination of melancholy and grief, the kind that permeates every instant of every day. depression, trauma, loss intertwine with lines, circles, squares, and rectangles. every poem reads into you.
April 8, 2024
i really wanted to like this, there were some parts in enjoyed but ultimately this fell flat for me. the concept is so interesting. i think the syntax wasn’t right for me, i felt like i was waiting for another layer to be revealed but it never came
April 5, 2024
Put her in the pantheon of holy poets
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