Victoria Chang
Writer and editor Victoria Chang earned a BA in Asian studies from the University of Michigan, an MA in Asian studies from Harvard University, an MBA from Stanford University, and an MFA from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her collections of poetry include Circle (2005), winner of the Crab Orchard Review Award Series in Poetry; Salvinia Molesta (2008); The Boss (2013); and Barbie Chang (2017). Her poems have been published in the Kenyon Review, Poetry, the Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry 2005. In 2017, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Chang is the editor of the anthology Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation (2004). In addition to editing, she writes children's books and teaches in Antioch University’s MFA program. She lives in Southern California with her family. Source
Is It Rude for Barbie Chang
Is it rude for Barbie Chang to tell men
she doesn’t love them
just the idea of them what if we don’t
even love living but just
the idea of it pictures always look
lovely but it was an
ugly day if women were actually paid
the same as men would
we all just pass on the highest bidder
who says it’s a privilege
to be romantic romance with its antics
and its time limits like the
nut that never tells us or other nuts
when it will let go
we stand under the tree ready to
collect them with our
arms wide open as in waltzing who
authored the word love
does anyone know the author’s original
intent does it matter
that no one knows exactly what it means
does it matter that it
might signify everything what if we never
needed a word for it
what if it is shapeless and composed
of gestures if we name
the thing love it doesn’t mean it
will last a nut does its
best to last but at some point just falls
like all the others before it
Published:
2018
Length:
Regular
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2024
Themes:
Love & Relationships
Womanhood
Literary Devices:
Couplets
two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit
Extended Metaphor
a metaphor that extends through several lines or even an entire poem
Internal Rhyme
A rhyme involving a word in the middle of a line and another at the end of the line or in the middle of the next.
Polyptoton
The use of multiple words with the same root in different forms.
Simile
a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”