With My Back to the World: Poems
Inspired by Agnes Martin's paintings and writings, this collection moves between loss, depression, art, and a changing sense of self. Its quiet abstraction still leaves a strong physical and emotional trace.
Work Information
It moves between painting and memory to rethink the boundary between the self and the world.
Responding to Agnes Martin's work and thinking, the book asks how poetry can absorb the gaze and silence of painting. Through formal experiment, it delicately explores existence, time, memory, and grief.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Published
- 2024-04-02
- Pages
- 112 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.13 x 1.52 x 24.26 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780374611132
- ISBN-10
- 0374611130
- Price
- 4774 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Poetry/American
Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR Named One of the Best Poetry Collections of the Year by The Guardian , Literary Hub , and Electric Literature A new collection of poetry inspired by the work of Agnes Martin, exploring topics of feminism, art, depression, and grief, by the author of the prizewinning collection Obit . Yesterday I slung my depression on my back and went to the museum. I only asked four attendants where the Agnes painting was and the fifth one knew. I walked into the room and saw it right away. From afar, it was a large white square. With My Back to the World engages with the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin, the celebrated abstract artist, in ways that open up new modes of expression, expanding the scope of what art, poetry, and the human mind can do. Filled with surprise and insight, wit and profundity, the book explores the nature of the self, of existence, life and death, grief and depression, time and space. Strikingly original, fluidly strange, Victoria Chang's new collection is a book that speaks to how we see and are seen.
Victoria Chang has written several books of poetry, including With My Back to the World , which received the Forward Prize in Poetry for Best Collection of Poems. Her poetry collection OBIT was named a New York Times Notable Book and a TIME Must-Read Book, and received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. It was also long-listed for a National Book Award and named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize. She has published many other books including a nonfiction book, Dear Memory and several books for children such as a middle grade verse novels, Eureka and Love Love . Chang has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Chowdhury International Literature Award. She is the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and the Director of Poetry@Tech.
Reviews
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Chang's poems about Agnes Martin's art disturbs and can uplift. Life and the human condition are rendered in Agnes's art and Chang's poetic musings about her art. Also, favorite poems about the death of Chang's father with grief and depression eloquently told. A brave and bold collection of poetry that only Chang can deliver. Chang emotionally bleeds on the page much like Agnes Martin bleeds on the canvas. KUDOS!
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This should be negative, but it is not. Can there be an artistically fulfilling and happy depression? This is Chang's best volume so far. A brave and truthful look inward.
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The poems in this collection are so different from what I normally read. I was intrigued by the counting, the lines and grids. The first and third sections seem to be ecphrastic and made me want to look at Agnes's work. The second section is heartbreaking and brutal. Well worth the read.
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Enjoyable
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of course the poetry is intact... but the book is a little worse for the wear...
Related Literary Awards
- Forward Prizes for Poetry Edition 33 (2024) ・Excellence Award