The History of Anonymity: Poems [Paperback]

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.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.

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.

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.

[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.

Chang's collection is prone to return to mind. It leaves you with a sense of its pollƒR