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Five Stars for Circle Sep 13, 2005 (5 of 6 found this helpful)
In charting a path of departure from, and return to the poet's Chinese-American roots, Circle encompasses a daring range of subjects and moods, and does so in language that is at once suggestive and precise. Here is a poet whose sympathies are wide enough that she can find herself in almost anything -- from the cycles of a shiny KitchenAid mixer, "dancing in circles, spinning around and around," to the crack in the toilet seat of her family's restaurant. Here is a poet whose imagination is bold enough that she can inhabit the souls of characters otherwise known to us only through the impersonal narratives of history or the daily news -- a woman who has enlisted as a man in the Union army, Eva Braun anticipating Hitler's arrival in her bedchamber, a divorcée during the Shang Dynasty (1765-1123 BC), a contemporary banker charged with obstruction of justice, or Lady Jane Grey in her "gemmed neck" -- soon to be severed from her head on the executioner's block. Everything is connected Chang seems to say, with her sometimes surprising choice of subjects; our wants are an "infinite accordion," and even the nose on my face, which seems so uniquely my own, won't die with me, but instead "will ever last/ somewhere in someone." Technically assured, sharply imagined, wryly observed, and always honest and deeply felt, Circle is a first book that will reward re-reading.
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One of the best poetry titles I've read this year. Sep 17, 2007 (2 of 2 found this helpful)
Victoria Chang, Circle (Crab Orchard Review, 2005)
Every once in a while, I stumble upon a book like Circle (I say "stumble" because at this point I've no idea where I read about it originally), and all the time I spend reading poetry that ranges from the mediocre to the mind-splittingly awful is worth it. For Circle is one of those books where the poems leap off the page and come at you with a boning knife, gazing hungrily at the innards lying beneath that flap of belly fat you've been trying so hard to work off these past few years. While this is not happy stuff, for the most part, Chang manages to retain a twisted sense of humor about life, the universe, and everything:
After returning from Arkansas, I've never been the same.
Little here, little there, it's always great
to go à la carte-- it gives leverage and leave, it lends option to pull out
that front tooth or start saying y'all.
I begin to acknowledge feet with hair on the big toes, my eyes
get greener and green.
Periodically, there's a 300-point inspection and I'm checked,
re-checked, and checked again,
but what if the checker is the one missing a tooth? What if
I discover this
when I'm more than halfway? Do I turn back or keep going away
from home--
two small dots plucking broken guitars?
("Majority Rules")
Oh, yes, folks. I am unabashed in my love for this book, which will most likely make my top ten reads of the year. You want it. **** ½
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Emerging Poet Victoria Chang Nov 30, 2006 (2 of 2 found this helpful)
What I love about Ms. Chang's work is her directness and her intensity. Though she said in an interview in June of this year that she would like to be more daring, I find her sense of political and social outrage infuses even the simplest of domestic situations, a fully committed kind of daring, as in this description of a rice dish the speaker prepares in "The Dragon Boat Festival" interwoven with a revelation about murdered baby girls: " I snip the string, unwrap the leaves, the rice pulses with steam, black dates ache, the wind smells of wet grass, sugar, fractured flesh." This is a wonderful book by an emerging poet who will become one of our nation's finest.
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Poems encompass both the distant past, particularly laws, history, and customs of ancient China, and the muddled modern day Nov 10, 2005 (3 of 4 found this helpful)
Circle is a collection of poetry by published poet and editor of "Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation" Victoria Chang. Poems encompass both the distant past, particularly laws, history, and customs of ancient China, and the muddled modern day. The female perspective, with its share of unique pains and mistreatments past and present, shines through in this interconnected anthology written with frankness and passion. Meditation at Petoskey: An old woman on the beach hands me a stone. / I tell her of the ruining landscape, tortoise backs / of stone, algae colonies, like puzzles on rock, / the lighthouse column with its cracked putty / and rotating eye. But she says, nothing has changed, / we have always been this way - a thousand young larks / mount the sudden breeze.
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Highly recommended first book Jun 3, 2005 (5 of 7 found this helpful)
Victoria Chang's poetry is at once fierce and understated. Some of the best poems in the book deal poignantly with historical figures and events, such as "Seven Reasons for Divorce" ("Disobedience (to in-laws)/ I am the girl who wakes within an ocean,/ making winter melon soup for my mother-in-law,/ whose taste buds rise like thorns.") and "Lantern Festival," showing the scope of the poet's ambition. Yet Chang also entertains the reader with poems about pop culture icons from movies such as "Rear Window" and "Gone with the Wind," and allows startling intimacy in poems like "Five Year Plan." A young poet with impressive skills and a strong voice.