With My Back to the World is a poetry collection where Victoria Chang reflects on the life and art of painter Agnes Martin. Through her poems, she explores personal topics, such as who we are, how we deal with grief and sadness, and how we experience time, space, and being alive.
Many of the poems put into words some of the feelings we often struggle to name. Those emotional moments that are hard to explain is captured in this book beautifully.
It’s thoughtful and full of meaning.
My Favorite Bits
With My Back to the World, 1997
The terror of this year was emptiness. But I learned that it’s
Victoria Chang
possible for a sentence to have no words. That the meaning of a word can exist without the word. That life can still occur
without a mind. That emptiness still swarms without the world. That it can be disconnected from the wall and still
light up. The best thing about emptiness is if you close your eyes in a field, you’ll open your eyes in a field.
Leaves, 1996
On some days, my depression is over there in a picnic basket while I am over here looking at art. On these days, I can’t control it but at least it’s covered, on a lawn, away for a while. On those days, the ants are closer to my depression than I am. When one finds it, it sends all the ants to it. They cut up my depression, lift it away to feed a queen. Somehow, the queen doesn’t get surprised after eating it. But after they’re done, I still feel it the next day. Agnes must have miscalculated. There are 127 lines but only 3 complete sets of 4. The set on top of the pairing only has 3 lines. I miscalculated my depression. The last time i saw it was at 10:00 pm. I always think it’s gone. But it regrows each night. It has skin. It is even waterproof. In that way, it resembles leaves. But everything resembles leaves at some point, the way they need a host, the way they are called leaf, whether they are on a tree or not, their arrival and decay. Maybe that’s what we’re all doing. Language isn’t actually inside us as i had thought. We are tenants of language. We are leaving while writing.
Victoria Chang
Untitled #1, 2003
(..) Sometimes I hold a secret in my body for so long that it begins to resemble my cells. Depression isn’t actually the secret, but has a secret. I gave up trying to locate depression’s antecedent. When we don’t know where something comes from, it belongs to no one and is free.
Victoria Chang
Play, 1996
(..) Maybe we are all small pieces without a whole, and there is no one self, just the old selves alongside the never selves, and looking for a whole is depression. Which is why my depression on view isn’t actually on a canvas at all but it is in the air and illegible.
Victoria Chang
Author: Victoria Chang
Publication date: 2 April 2024
Number of pages: 112 pages
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