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Victoria Chang has written several books of poetry, including With My Back to the World and The Trees Witness Everything, and a nonfiction book, Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. Her poetry collection Obit received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the PEN/Voelcker Award; was Longlisted for the National Book Award; and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. More about this author >
From the publisher:
After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grief during a feverish two weeks by writing scores of poetic obituaries for all she lost in the world. In Obit, Chang writes of “the way memory gets up after someone has died and starts walking.” These poems reinvent the form of newspaper obituary to both name what has died (“civility,” “language,” “the future,” “Mother’s blue dress”) and the cultural impact of death on the living. Whereas elegy attempts to immortalize the dead, an obituary expresses loss, and the love for the dead becomes a conduit for self-expression. In this unflinching and lyrical book, Chang meets her grief and creates a powerful testament for the living.
