With My Back to the World

'Painterly, meditative . . . Full of memorable insights as Chang experiments with erased and occluded work, all the while operating in the realm of feeling, where "desire is the only thing / with nerve endings." These elegiac poems thoughtfully balance the head and the heart' Publisher's Weekly (starred review)'Victoria Chang's lucid and playful poetry surprised and moved me with its friendly abundance of Koanlike lines - stimulating yet calming news from the dreamy outskirts of human consciousness' Tao Lin, author of Leave Society'In Agnes Martin's grid paintings, each pale rectangle can feel like an hour, a day, or a year. The effect of all these small variations seen at once approximates the overwhelming fact of other lives. With My Back to the World gives Victoria Chang that same kind of quiet, intimate, constrained but infinite room to work in. This book is the record of an artful, attentive mind, full of startling insights ("My solitude is like the grass. I become so aware of its presence that it too begins to feel like an audience"), a testament to care, integrity, and persistence' Elisa Gabbert, author of Normal Distance