WEBVTT

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Thank you, and shout
out to Assessment.

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It matters.

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You can go to assmatters.org,
which is the Assessment Matters

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Institute for Assessment
Matteration, where assessment

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really matters.

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It's like a national
institute that I run.

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So if you'd like
to be on the board,

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you can also just
drop me a line,

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and I'm happy to
have you involved.

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Thank you so much
for being here.

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It's been a little
while since I've

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been back at the Poetry Center.

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And it feels really good,
kind of a homecoming,

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to be back here.

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It's also been a
little while since I

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saw Victoria Chang reading.

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So I'm really looking
forward to this evening.

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Also, you have a
treat in front of you.

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So yesterday, when visiting
my Creative Writing class,

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Victoria Chang said
something that, to be frank,

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rocked my world.

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Responding to a
question about which

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of the poems in one of her
books she likes the best, even

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if nobody else does--

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it was my question, I
should just say that.

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That wasn't my
student's question.

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That was my question.

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I thought that was
a good question.

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She told my class
that she doesn't

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have any feelings about
the work once she's

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written it, none at all.

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She doesn't have any
particular affection

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for any poem from Obit, her
great 2020 book from Copper

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Canyon in which she writes these
unhinged obits for her father's

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frontal lobe, for her mother,
for versions of herself,

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voicemail language, memory,
civility, friendships

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and a lot more.

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Nor does she have warm
feelings for a series

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of my favorite poems from 2014's
The Boss, in which she writes

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into and out of Office at Night,
one among many Edward Hopper

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paintings that are written
about and to and in the book,

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nor even for her
first very lovely book

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of non-fiction,
Dear Memory: Letters

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On Writing, Silence, and
Grief, published by Milkweed

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last year, in which
after her mother's death,

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she sorts through the objects
from her mother's life,

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present some of
them to the reader

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and uses them to ask
questions in letters

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to, among others, her mother,
grandmother, grandfather,

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a childhood acquaintance,
silence, the body, teachers,

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her sister, daughters,
the Ford Motor Company,

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and so on.

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You may sense a pattern
here, how she builds or finds

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or adopts a form
and then turns it

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to unconventional directions,
to surprising and thrilling

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results.

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Nor will she even say she loves
or is embarrassed by any poem

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from her first book,
Circle, from which I

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saw her read some years
ago in Muncie, Indiana.

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Might she feel a little more
strongly for her newest book,

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The Trees Witness Everything,
another adventures in form

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in which she uses Japanese
syllabic forms called

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wakas and frames them with
titles from W.S. Merwin poems?

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I suspect the answer is no.

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This is a very cool
book, Victoria.

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How can you not feel this?

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[LAUGHTER]

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I asked myself why I was so
shocked at this statement

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and what it meant that
I felt more personally

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attached to these books
than she apparently did.

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And I do.

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I guess I shouldn't
be shocked, though.

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As she puts it in Dear
Memory, "Each book

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isn't just a book but a
period of life, a period

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of learning how to write."

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--which is true.

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But it's also a book, isn't it?

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And a book is a collection of
poems, or essays, or images,

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or image text pieces, or
reproductions of objects.

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But a book is also
a mass of things

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that collects and is collected.

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It's an architectural
record of a life,

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maybe the best record of a
writer's life, or the writing

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part of a writer's
life, or at least

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of the writer's mind,
which is, after all, one

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of Chang's primary subjects.

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As she told my class, "My
subject is always thinking."

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Yes, to this.

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But the subject of a
Victoria Chang work

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is also inevitably
language and form

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and the ultimate inadequacy
of both in the writer's quest

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to represent the world.

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Maybe this is why she doesn't
carry affection for the works

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themselves, just the act of
working, writing, wanting,

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as she puts it, "--wanting not
only books but to be surprised

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again and again by the possible
collisions of language.

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Restless making with an
imperfect tool is the thing

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that matters and gives the truer
pleasure--" Victoria tells us,

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"--not its result,
the made thing,

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however beautiful and
moving it may be."

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It's bizarre when
you think about it

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that we use the same word
for both act and thing.

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Work, we work in
order to make a work."

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Tim Gunn tells us from 2010
to make sure to make it work,

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to make the work work.

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That is, the work of art
produces the work of art.

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So which exactly
is the work-- is

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the real work of art, my dudes?

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We come to art to
experience whatever

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sliver we get to act as
witnesses to transformation

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to be moved.

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Another Victoria Chang poem
tells us, quote, "We praise

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the artist, not the apple,
not the apple shadow,

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which is murdered slowly.

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There must be some way
of drawing a picture,

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so it doesn't become an elegy."

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Unquote.

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I still don't have the answer
to my earlier question, what

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it means that I cared
more for her books

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than, apparently, she
did, except to say

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that the books are
all that I have.

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These works are the
only ones I can access,

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that you can access, that we
all can access here tonight,

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except here tonight where we
get a little bit of the worker

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as well as the work.

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So even if the books are
diminished things by comparison

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to the work done to make them,
they're still pretty damn good.

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I will take them.

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I'll buy them.

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I'll keep them and have
feelings about them.

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And I think that you will too.

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So please welcome
tonight, Victoria Chang.

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[APPLAUSE]

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