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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:
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.
