Tag: Victoria Chang

jan 11/RUN

5.6 miles
franklin loop
17 degrees / feels like 0
50% snow-covered

Warm air, warm sun. Another good run. Headed north and decided, at the last minute, to do the Franklin loop. Heard some geese, their honks congregating under the lake street bridge. Maybe some crows too? I know I heard another bird, but I can’t remember now. A black-capped chickadee? Definitely no woodpeckers. Running over the franklin bridge, I studied the river: all white, mostly flat, the edges a silvery shimmer. Later, nearing the trestle, I saw a few bits of black: open water. Encountered some other runners, walkers, at least one fat tire. As I reached the lake street bridge, I came up with a line for a swimming poem that I’m revisiting. I stopped on the bridge to record it into my phone.

Anything else? Most of what happened, what I thought about, got left somewhere out on the trail.

This morning, just as I was leaving for my run, the mail came, bringing the chapbook by Victoria Chang I ordered last week. I think they only made 200+ of them. It’s a small square book, bound with thin red twine. Very cool. I’d like to try making something like this. Titled, Another Lost Year, it is made up of short poems, all with W.S. Merwin titles. So many great ones. Here’s one I especially like. It happens to fall in the very middle of the book, where the red twine is exposed and tied in a knot.

Left Open / Victoria Chang

We can’t see beyond
the crest of the wooden gate.
We are carriers
of grass yet to be grown. We
aren’t made of cells, but of fields.

I like this idea of being a carrier of grass yet to be grown. My first thought was of grass on graves — Whitman’s “uncut hair of graves” or Dickinson’s “The color of the grave is green”. Then I thought of Gwendolyn Brooks’ “To the Young Who Want to Die”:

Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

I like the idea of being made of fields, not cells. Here’s the original Merwin poem:

Left Open / W.S. Merwin

The shutters are rusted open on the north
kitchen window ivy has grown over
the fastenings the casements are hooked open
in the stone frame high above the river
looking out across the tops of plum trees
tangled on their steep slope branches furred
with green moss gray lichens the plums falling
through them and beyond them the ancient
walnut trees standing each alone on its
own shadow in the plowed red field full
of amber September light after so
long unattended dead boughs still hold
places of old seasons high out of the leaves
under which in the still day the first walnuts
from this last summer are starting to fall
beyond the bare limbs the river looks
motionless like the far clouds that were not
there before and will not be there again

dec 7/RUN

5.1 miles
minnehaha falls and back
10 degrees / feels like 1
light snow / 100% snow-covered

Winter! Snow, (almost) empty trails, fresh cold air, not too much wind. What a wonderful run. I ran slow and steady. The trails were completely covered and, if I didn’t know the paths so well, I might have had trouble seeing where to go but, I’ve run here so many times, I was fine. Everything was white, even the river.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. 2 types of crunching as my foot touched the ground, then lifted up: a slow creeaakk then a quick snap. Longer when walking, shorter as I ran. Both happening at same time, with the touching foot creaking and the lifting off foot snapping
  2. Snow brushed on one side of the tree trunk, looking like confectioners sugar
  3. the curved retaining wall, above the ravine, was easy to see, no longer hidden behind leaves
  4. Graffitti all over the wall of the biking half of the double bridge
  5. the falls were gushing at the bottom, iced at the top
  6. most of the trail was not slippery, but a few spots of ice or crusty snow hidden under fresh snow, were slick
  7. a few trucks and some workers parked near the John Stevens House, calling out to each other in loud voices
  8. the fake/recorded bell from the light rail train dinging for at least 10 seconds
  9. someone running much faster than me wearing a bright yellow vest
  10. lots of cars on the river road, most had their full lights on, at least one only had their parking lights on, a few had no lights on

Found this series of poems by Victoria Chang this morning, from her upcoming collection, The Trees Witness Everything:

The Wild Geese/ Victoria Chang

They are not wisdom
or freedom or history.
They are not what’s lost.
They are nothing but wild geese.
I can hear them everywhere,
wings pushing down metaphor.

Here’s what she writes in her “about the poem” section:

“These are a group of small poems that are a part of my forthcoming book, The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). They are all written in various syllabic forms and the titles are all W.S. Merwin poem titles.”

This one is almost a tanka (5/7/5/7/7), with one extra 7 syllable line at the end. In Obit Chang wrote a tanka that I really like:

My children, children,
there’s applesauce everywhere
but it’s not for you.
It is strange to help someone
grow while helping someone die.

I love how effectively and efficiently she captures the difficulty of being a parent while your parent is dying. The applesauce does so much here, conjuring up little kids and their snacks, and old people at retirement homes eating softer foods. It makes me reflect on the similarities and differences between the very young and the very old, both needing help, but having different futures.

nov 28/RUN

5.6 miles
minnehaha regional park and back*
27 degrees / feels like 20

*south on river road trail to the falls/ up the steps and over the bridge past John Stevens House/ turn around at 3 miles and the entrance to the trail that leads to a steep set of many steps down to the mississippi / back by the falls/ north on the river road trail

A cold wind this morning making it harder to breathe. Sunny, uncrowded, clear trails. Another nice run. Still thinking about ghosts. Thought about possessing, dispossessing, repossessing and then this reminder popped into my head: you can’t ever truly own (or possess, as in own, control, take over) something. The river gorge, for example, can be maintained, managed, exploited but it always exceeds that control. It spills over, invades, resists, refuses to be tamed.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. At the start of my run, before the sky had fully cleared, heading south, the sun was illuminating the river. The water was all silvery white with a few dark spots, caused by the reflection of a tree or a building
  2. All the trees are bare, nothing blocking the view to the Winchell Trail and the river below
  3. My shadow was clearly visible in front of me, not the faint hint of a shadow, but a full, almost solid form
  4. The falls: water still rushing over the rocks, but also big columns of ice falling down too
  5. After running under the ford bridge, I noticed — not for the first time — a dirt trail that winds through the small woods between ford parkway above and west river parkway below. For much of the year, this trail is hidden behind leaves
  6. The dinging of the train bells at the 50th street station on the other side of Hiawatha — not real bells, but a recording. A hollow, fake sound
  7. Voices from runners approaching. It took a long time for me to tell if they were coming from in front of or behind me
  8. The sidewalk/walking path that winds above the gorge between the Veteran’s Home and the dog park often undulates — up up doooowwwwnnn
  9. Running parallel to someone below on the Winchell trail, hearing the leaves rustle as they ran through them
  10. At the end of my run: the clicking and clacking of a roller skier’s poles

Finally, after getting this book in July of 2020, I’m reading Victoria Chang’s amazing Obit. Here’s one that mentions a shadow:

Victoria Chang–died unknowingly on
June 24, 2009 on the I-405 freeway.
Born in the Motor City, it is fitting
she died on a freeway. When her
mother called about her father’s heart
attack, she was living an indented
life, a swallow that didn’t dip. This
was not her first death. All her deaths
had creases except this one. It didn’t
matter that her mother was wrong (it
was a stroke) but that Victoria Chang
had to ask whether she should drive to
see the frontal lobe. When her mother
said yes, Victoria Chang had the
feeling of not wanting to. Someone
heard that feeling. Because he did
not die but all of his words did. At the
hospital, Victoria Change cried when
her father no longer made sense. This
was before she understood the cruelty
of his disease. It would be the last time
she cried in front of it. She switched
places with her shadow because
suffering changes shape and happens
secretly.

march 6/RUN

3.2 miles
trestle turn around
37 degrees

Sunny. Spring-y. Birds chirping. Hardly any wind. A few highlights: I was able to run on the walking path that curves away from the road and the biking path and follows the rim of the gorge just above the Minneapolis Rowing club! Still a few tricky snow-covered spots, but mostly clear. Enjoyed running up the hill from under the lake street bridge, listening to my feet sh sh sh on the grit–I liked the feel of it too, easier than bare asphalt. Anything else? No Dave the Daily Walker. No geese. Looked briefly at the river. It was open–no ice. I noticed a few stones stacked on the smaller of the two boulders just above the trail winding down through the tunnel of trees.

Before starting my run, I listened to two versions of my January Joy poem, one with the parts about running, one without. I’d like to keep the running stuff in and I love the line about adequate knees and functioning feet but I’m leaning more towards the version without it. Maybe I can use those lines in another poem?

January Joy, Version 1

To see the river
the open river
brown, a thin skin of pale blue

To be alone with the river
the uncrowded river
nothing between us but bare branches

To be as empty as the river
the bare white river
a blank page waiting for words

To be as spacious as the river
the boundless river
stretching wide, able to hold multitudes

To be nothing next to the river
the ancient river
small and new and insignificant

O to be the space
above the river
between tree top and sky
illuminated by the sun!

The sun!
glowing up the gray gloom
warming my cold face
flashing through tall, slender tree trunks

How wonderful it is to be alive and outside!

O great runs!
O clear paths!
O strong legs
and adequate knees
and functioning feet!

How wonderful it is to be
moving, breathing, feeling free
on this winter-perfect day!

January Joy, Version 2 (preferred)

To see the river
the open river
brown, a thin skin of pale blue

To be alone with the river
the uncrowded river
nothing between us but bare branches

To be as empty as the river
the bare white river
a blank page waiting for words

To be as spacious as the river
the boundless river
stretching wide, able to hold multitudes

To be nothing next to the river
the ancient river
small and new and insignificant

O to be the space
above the river
between tree top and sky
illuminated by sun!

The sun!
Glowing up the gray gloom
warming my cold face
flashing through tall, slender tree trunks

How wonderful it is to be
alive and outside
on this winter-perfect day!

I am really looking forward to Victoria Chang’s Obit, which comes out next month. Here’s something interesting she said in an interview about writing the poems for the collection:

The old self dies all the time, and it’s quite miraculous. Yet, I asked the man who runs these residencies in Marfa on the way in, what it’s like to be 77. He said, “I feel exactly the same.” How can this be? The tension between what remains and what is discarded in the self was really interesting to me. I always find it odd thinking about how we spend our whole lives learning and all that experience and knowledge accumulates, and then we die. Who designed this thing?

I feel this sense of old selves dying very strongly. I see myself as a series of Saras, not one Sara lasting through time. Sometimes the selves are associated with an age: like Sara age 8. Sometimes with a location: Hickory, North Carolina Sara. Sometimes with a tragic event: Sara whose mom is alive, Sara whose mom is dead. Looking again at Chang’s words I wonder, what have I kept (knowledge, memories, perspectives, understandings) that links all of my Saras together? What have I discarded/forgotten?

feb 28/BIKERUN

bike: 25 minutes
bike stand, basement
run: 1.5 miles
treadmill, basement

Wanted to watch more of The Ring and to not run too much so I worked out in the basement today. The Ring was still creepy–and fun to watch. Only a few scenes were too dark to see and it didn’t matter that I couldn’t read the words that were probably important; I’ve already seen this movie. Listened to my playlist while I ran. Got into a rhythm and felt like I was barely touching the belt. I’m getting used to running on the treadmill.

I was okay running inside because I had already gone for a walk earlier with Delia the dog. Brr. It felt cold outside. Walked around the neighborhood and finished the podcast I started yesterday with Victoria Chang. I’m looking forward to reading her book Obit. As I listened to her and the host Rachel Zucker discuss their grief over the loss of their mothers, my mind started wandering and I started thinking about my current project. I decided to record my thoughts:

So I’m thinking as I was walking–I’m thinking about how I’d like this workbook to kind of be some of the exercises I’ve already done and practiced (or am practicing) but also the ideas that I’ve put in that I’d like to try. Just make a list of all of those things and not worry so much about whether or not it can be done but whether I’d like to try it. The other thing I was thinking about was with listening to Victoria Chang about Obit and grief and thinking about how my mom’s death has changed me and how this project really comes out of that. Or does it come out of that? Where does it come from? Does it have a clear origin? Wanting to discuss what it’s origins are.

Speaking of Obit, here’s one of Chang’s poems from it. The book is a series of obituaries for all the things that died after her mom died. Such a powerful idea!

OBIT [Memory]/ Victoria Chang

Memory—died August 3, 2015.  The
death was not sudden but slowly over a
decade.  I wonder if, when people die,
they  hear  a  bell.   Or  if  they  taste
something sweet, or if they feel a knife
cutting them in half, dragging through
the flesh like sheet cake.  The caretaker
who witnessed my mother’s death quit. 
She holds the memory and images and
now they are gone.  For the rest of her
life, the memories are hers.  She said
my mother couldn’t breathe, then took
her last breath 20 seconds later.  The
way I have imagined a kiss with many
men I have never kissed.  My memory
of  my  mother’s  death  can’t  be  a
memory but is an imagination, each
time the wind blows, leaves unfurl
a little differently.

I woke up this morning thinking of the line about the knife dragging through flesh like sheet cake. Intense.

feb 27/RUN

3.2 miles
trestle turn around
26 degrees
100% clear!

Windy today. Not too crowded. Sunny. My legs felt weird for a mile or so–like they weren’t quite working. Heavy, plodding. Listened to a New Yorker poetry podcast with a poet I just discovered (Craig Morgan Teicher) and felt like I was in a dream. Barely on the path, floating, cocooned in layers, unable to hear birds or trickling water or striking feet. The river was open. Stopped and admired it by the trestle. Then turned on my new playlist. No Daily Walker but a few others walkers, at least one biker. Felt fast in the second half as I flew down the hill by the lake street bridge. Sprinted up the final hill. Don’t remember much from the run. What a wonderful thing it is to lose myself for 30 minutes!

Before I ran, I had a great morning. Started by listening to part of an episode with Victoria Change on Commonplace. At one point, they discuss their shifts in writing in first and third person which got me thinking about my own choice, in my latest project, to write in second person. Why am I using you? Who is you? Found some very interesting essays on second person online: Stuck on You: an ode the second person and the intimacy of writing in the second person in a bar. Then I started thinking about how Mary Oliver uses you, like in Wild Geese (You do not have to be good/you do not have to walk on your knees…). Finally I thought about who the I and the You are in my project. One answer: I = Teacher self and You = Student Self.

After all of that excellent thinking, I checked out twitter and found these lines from the poem Tomorrow and Tomorrow Again/Craig Morgan Teicher:

One cannot lock eyes with a bird,
its eyes vacant as ball bearings, but
mustn’t there be some recognition
in everything?

eyes vacant as black ball bearings? What a great line that reminds me of my own about not being able to see people’s pupils: “soul less black balls”. I looked Teicher up and found his poem, “Eye Contact”. I wondered, does he have macular degeneration or some other vision problem? Couldn’t find anything, but he sure does like referencing blindness. His poetry collection from 2012 is titled, To Keep Love Blurry and check out the titles he gave his NPR end of the year poetry reviews: “Keeping the Dark at Bay” and “In the Dark, The Eye Begins to See.” Hmm…I need to study his writing more. At this point, early on, I can’t decide what he’s doing with these references to blindness–is it signaling his own experiences/preoccupations with blindness or is it serving as metaphor, where blind = dark = bad = shame = grief = loss = death?

Tomorrow and Tomorrow Again/ Craig Morgan Teicher

Of course I don’t know what
happens to us: if we survive in the
hands of love; if Cal, if Simone
and all the trembling answers
those questions entail; whether
by time or by disease or by
an atom bomb right in the eye. Is it
possible death could be thrilling
and fun? And after could there be
something somewhere and what
will we do if we see each other
there? Will the same songs stay stuck
in our heads? Will medicine
succeed in making life so long
we will beg for medicine to end it?
One cannot lock eyes with a bird,
its eyes vacant as ball bearings, but
mustn’t there be some recognition
in everything? Some fury, some
questioning? If one phrase could echo
throughout eternity, would the ear
on the other side return
a word? But what am I asking?
Will I ever see a whale, and will his size
compared to mine be a true
form of knowledge? Loneliness
has depths writing fails to fathom.
I could be clearer, say more, but
it wouldn’t mean as much. Mother
will I ever find you again? Is fear
of spiders fair? Is a power
above minding the scales, be it
science or gods or the weather,
and can they be tipped toward
balance from here? Is beauty more
than another form of pleasure?
What, which, when, how is better?

Eye Contact/ Craig Morgan Teicher

As if bees are known for their pride.
But what’s so great about horses? They’re stuck 
on the earth except when they jump,

but even then they’re not bees.
But is there anything we value so highly 
as streetlights, which, unlike bees,

watch over us with their swan-like
necks and open their eyes at the right time 
every night? The answer is lonely

and whoever among us is brave enough 
to find it will come home to a family 
that won’t even look us in the eyes.


2

But what’s so great about eye contact? 
As if a horse knows a newspaper 
when he sees it. Streetlights don’t live

in hives; they’re not more afraid
of us than we are, fortified by stingers and swarms. 
Bees don’t brighten the alleyways

in which we commit our most heinous crimes 
to keep things moving and fill 
the papers with news. Why don’t we have

a holiday to recognize the alleyways?
The answer is lonely and whoever
among us is brave will have nowhere to jump.


3

Why don’t we sing a song that makes 
the bees proud? What’s so great 
about desolate meadows? The answer

is lonely. Why don’t we come home 
and look at our family? Why don’t we 
designate an hour to brag about news?

What’s so great about the way the papers 
blow through alleyways in the evening 
like deflated rats? As if pride could

brighten the meadows at night. Whoever 
among us is brave enough to forgive
a family gets to make eyes with a lonely horse.


4

As if the answer is flowers. As if 
we could gather streetlights
in a bouquet from the alleyways

and brighten family after 
beekeeping family. But what’s so 
great about seeing the truth?

Beneath every meadow is the earth’s 
molten core, red and hot as an evil eye. 
Why don’t we blow through the streets

at night? The answer is lonely, even 
if a horse knows the way home. 
What’s so great about being brave?

freeze-thaw, a different perspective

added in a few hours after I first posted this entry: Scrolling through my twitter feed, I encountered this very helpful, perspective-shifting idea from Paul Huttner on MPR Weather:

Temperatures over the next week look perfect for gradually reducing snowpack across the Upper Midwest. Days above the thawing point will melt snow. Nights below freezing mean that snowmelt will gradually be released into area rivers.

This gradual release helps mitigate the early-spring threat of flooding. Wow! All this time, I’ve been cranking about how much I hate these freeze-thaw cycles. I’m glad to read that they’re helpful. I still might not like how dangerous they make the path, but now I can get over myself and think about how they help the river. What a nice opportunity to shift my perspective. And, as a bonus: it will be warmer during the day next week!

dec 19/BIKERUN

bike: 22 minutes
basement, bike stand
run: 1.2 miles
basement, treadmill

Mostly biked today. Giving my legs a rest from running hard last night on the us bank stadium concrete. Watched a Superleague Triathlon race on the bike, listened to a playlist on the treadmill. Wore a pair of ridiculously patterned leggings that I bought for my daughter a few years ago that she has never worn. Wow–blue and white tie-dyed with bright blue patches on the back of the knees.

We Are Monica (Acrostic)/ Victoria Chang

What if it were true? That in the
End, no matter what dress we look for,
All we have in our closets are blue ones?
Remember the surface area of the body?
Each one inch square can be bruised blue.
Maybe we know how to betray cloth, its
Old downy fibers are really our skin,
Nightmare after nightmare, it grows back,
It desires to be touched, and nerved, and
Caught. Maybe it is meant to be put on
And taken off, then put on and taken off.

*

What happened to the blue girl who
Entered into the meadow, the one we
Accused, then asked how it felt,
Rubbing our ears against her mouth for
Everything she would give, for what didn’t
Matter—did his hand touch you there
Or there, did he control or tendril?
Nothing, she was to us, but how
I would still look if she rose one night,
Covet the night, listen for their lies,
And take joy in hearing her cries.

*

Who are we to say who belongs on
Earth? We hate the cold mornings
And the warm mornings. What we
Require we never get. We have the hots for
Everything. We aspire to be aspirers.
Maybe we were meant to fancy everything,
Or at least think each vowel in a word
Needs to exist. How many ways can we
Inch forward? We can walk towards, even
Crawl towards with no legs. But even then, we
Are still dependent on dirt and its filth.

*

Why did we spend our lives looking
Everywhere for what we have now, if
All we want is travel? The red leaves,
Regioning off our yards, not the responsible
Envelopes that stay on the trees, but
Maple leaves, the ones that giddily
Opt to follow rain, those opportunists,
Never accepting stasis. Maybe we all
Itch for twice, life. Watch a new
Checker who opens a line at a store,
And how fast we leave each other to get there.

*

We are done for then, or are we just
Erratic, like a tack, constantly moved
Around from paper to paper. A tack never
Reflects, a tack doesn’t die for truth,
Expressing crisis at every new job.
Maybe we are all like tacks, one side sharp,
One side dark. And maybe we are all
Narrow, only truly visible in the night,
In the line of a troubled light.
Could our fingerprints exist because
We know we can’t be trusted?

*

What if, in the end, the want for
Everything, a drink of water, a mother,
A new face, is not a waste, or even
Rare, but what keeps us alive?
East me then, I say to the wind, song me,
Move me where you will, to edge, to roots.
O compass in my mouth, take me to
Noon, the summer, and send the warmth
Into my veins. I will follow it, let it
Carry me through the squares in the screen,
And let me not get stuck.

*

When we are done looking for the
Ex-wife, the ex-lover, the ex-girlfriend,
And finished looking through telescopes, we
Remember how we used to look into
Each round hole for something larger,
Meant to test our vision, not turn it
Onto our hearts and mine its every
Nook, see the heart’s shape as love,
Its arteries as desire. Call me half-hearted,
Cull me from the cold, turn me back to
August, those nights I studied the celestial.

*

Why is writing about her odd?
Evening comes constantly and poets
Ask too much of the moon, too much of
Reeds that always seem to sway.
Everything I know is in a house,
Measured by hands of men that nailed
Over the reeds and tried to roof me from
Night and its eye. This is what
I know but will never understand, this
Capsule, body, this thing that loves others
And lies to us, that doesn’t last.

I love acrostic poems with (not so) hidden messages. I’d like to spend some more time with this poem to read it closely.