When I wrote a poem inspired by misplacing a fountain pen, it sounded so much like a Kay Ryan poem, I called it “Material Imitation,” and dedicated it to her.
I couldn’t tell you all my other influences, and I wouldn’t bore you with a list if I could. But I was struck hard by this phenomenon when I read an unsigned obit in The Economist after Seamus Heaney died, and when I made my first, penned response to The Boss, by Victoria Chang. The piece about Heaney, though in prose (and Heaney himself wrote superb prose) had much of the meaty yet stately cadences and sure-footedness he was known for. I suspect the writer had some exceptional opportunities to absorb the same stimuli Heaney claimed,
It would be absurdly premature to suggest that Victoria Chang ‘s future can compare to Heaney’ s, even as her discipline, dedication and strong, unflinching music show a steady trajectory. I begin this way because my immediate, inked reaction after closing her book for the first time, sounded too much like her poetry, and that was fair neither to her nor to anyone who reads this piece. Part of this reason could be that I have been married to a Chinese-American for twenty five years, and though English is his native tongue, I have been exposed to large amounts of American vernacular with a Cantonese inflection. Notice the words “suspect” and “part” in my second and third paragraphs, as I acknowledge the oddly satisfying truth that completely defining influence is either a mystery or a task better left to neurologists and linguists.
Sometime I hear W. S. Merwin and Michelle Tea and others when I read Chang to myself or aloud, but her complete voice belongs to her alone. She often displays a discerning ear, as in “My Father Says”:
You can’t abandon punctuation without conquering the grammar of speech, knowing when each word needs or doesn’t need help. Victoria Chang is not only the boss, she provides a new universe .This is why her Edward Hopper poems sing with undercurrents of his day and ours, as in “Edward Hopper’s Automat”:
There is more in this poem and more on Hopper before and after these pages, proof that when you’re this good, what has been over-processed by others lives again, just as the helpless, confused father comes alive again in his daughter’s hands.
There is a compassionate, creative wisdom that is never overly labored , the voice of someone whose steadfast caring binds without choking, which is another reason her grammar is so well suited to the souls she reveals in “Today My Daughter”:
THAT is one staggering tour de force. Personal and political. Local and urgently international. Victoria Chang faces calamity without losing a grain of necessary kindness, and while making a seamless garment of technique and sensation. May the sounds and shapes of her perceptions lead us toward where we need to go, even if we have to stop ourselves from feeble imitation along the way.