A Conversation With Poet Victoria Chang
Contributor to our Fall Poetry Collection
Photo credit: Christopher Sturm
This fall, we wanted to celebrate the seasonal shift with a moment of reflection. We see coffee as a ritual, a daily meditation, and a few minutes of bliss—what better complements this than poetry? Slowing down to sit with a poem mirrors the reflection we hope you find in every cup of coffee. That’s why we partnered with the Poetry Society of America to find some of the brightest voices in the literary world to bring our coffees to life and inspire a moment of calm.
Victoria Chang, a poet, writer, and editor, wrote the poem featured alongside our seasonal single origin, Ethiopia Agaro Kata Muduga. We recently spoke with Victoria about her poem “In the Doorway” and what reflection looks like for her.
The Poem
The title, “In the Doorway,” feels very transitional: exiting one phase, entering a new one. Within the poem we move from counting the years past, to more present moments, to then looking to the future. What does the doorway represent in this movement of time?
I had written a whole bunch of tiny poems like this and all of the titles are actually from W. S. Merwin poems. After my book Obit, I was trying really hard not to write about anything. That book is all about my mother’s death and grief and it’s so specific. I thought it would be fun and a challenge to use someone else’s titles as a prompt for all these tiny poems and get out of my own head.
I gave myself another set of restrictions within the poem. They are all in syllabic form—5 syllables, then 7, 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. That was really hard. When you’re thinking about the syllabics, counting syllables, it’s really hard to think about anything else. So I just let the inspiration of the titles carry me. What does “in the doorway” make you feel? I just immediately thought the doorway is open and there’s a lot of movement, and I ran with it.
There seems to be an element of finality running through the poem. The line “finally here” tells us you’ve reached a milestone and “checkmated” implies the ending of a game. What inspired that feeling of finality in you that is so opposed at the end of the poem?
I think the fifty mark was really traumatic. I’ll never forget, one time I asked my friend in his fifties “What’s up?” and his response was “Oh, I’m taking stock.” I wasn’t in my fifties at the time; I just didn’t understand what he meant by that. Why does one ever need to take stock? I’ve always been very forward looking and future oriented, but now I’m fifty and I understand. I probably have fewer years left in my life than have already passed over me. That was really frightening to me. I realized, this is it. There’s not much time left. One should take stock.
The other thing I noticed is people start seeing those in their fifties as old. When you turn fifty you suddenly see you’re no longer youthful. And then women go through the change of menopause which is really the first time we aren’t seen anymore—not that people always looked at me. Being an Asian American woman, you’re consistently invisible; people look through you. But I don’t think you realize how much you’re looked at your whole life as a woman until you're not looked at all and you're completely invisible. And I think a lot of these changes mimic the sort of changes that happen in nature. There’s a cycle of life, and you suddenly realize you’re a part of that cycle too.
When you were taking stock, what were some of your findings?
I’m still taking stock. I’m in it. I’ve started. In the time left that you have, what is it you want to do? I have limited time left, how do I want to spend my days? Who do I want to spend that time with? How do I then live my life? What do I want to accomplish in my writing? For me it’s just the act of writing. It makes me so happy. That’s all I want to do.
In the first lines, you mark your age by how many falls have gone by. Why do you think fall feels like a marker of time as opposed to other seasons?
I think in the past it’s always felt a bit like Oh, here comes that season again of sadness. Every year I just feel a little bit moodier when the sun’s not out. And the leaves turn and literally fall, so there’s a very real sense of decline.
But I do think the poem changes that idea at the end and subverts the traditional idea of fall. Every season is the future when you really think about it. Fall does get a little short-shrifted, but how is fall really any different from spring? We give spring so much credit for being bountiful and joyful, but I think fall should get some credit for being about the future too.
The Writer
How much or little do you think the pandemic played a role in inspiring or influencing this poem and your work as a whole?
The pandemic influenced everything. I wrote all of these little poems during the pandemic. I gained about 2.5 hours a day because I was working from home and suddenly I had time. So, I wrote an entire manuscript of poems. The feeling of the early days of the pandemic and the pandemic’s overall tone are all a part of these poems—a little bit of dread mixed with a little bit of hope.
How does your writing process shift when a poem’s theme or aspects of its form are already decided, as is such with a commissioned poem?
I think it opens up possibilities. It’s kind of the opposite of what one might think. When you are told to write a sonnet, you don’t want to be restricted like that, but actually a sonnet explodes the possibility of what you can write. If you sit down to just write a poem it goes in one direction, but when you actually have these limitations, you come up with language that doesn't fit the form, so you're forced to jettison it and take a lot of left and right turns you never would’ve taken otherwise.
Form can be really expansive. Poet Terrance Hayes said for him “Form is like a bird inside of a cage flying around.” I think there’s a lot of freedom to constraints. I would go a step further and say that form can actually allow the bird to escape the cage altogether.
For newcomers to poetry, do you have advice on how to navigate and sit with a poem?
Poetry is the antithesis of everything about our culture. Everything is speed, fast, instant gratification, lightning-speed thumb scrolls. You don’t read anything carefully. You react very quickly. Reading a poem is the opposite of all the things our culture is right now.
A poem requires you to slow down. Read it allowed. Read it slowly. Read it four times. There’s an idea, reread! I don’t think anyone rereads anymore. Poetry requires you to think twice, think three times. It requires you to deconstruct your own thinking, to go into the depths of philosophy—something a lot of people don’t think about anymore. It’s a beautiful thing if poetry can make someone just sit down for a second in the same way someone might slow down and savor a cup of coffee.
When you’re excited about something you want to save it. So, if you have a special, new drink, you don’t want to gulp it down. You want to sit quietly and consider how it tastes, and how the flavor coats your tongue, the feeling of how it goes down, and the feeling you get afterwards. I think reading a poem is no different than savoring something like a nice cup of coffee or a glass of wine or your favorite chocolate. I think slowing down is important.
In the Doorway
The fiftieth fall
is finally here. Have you
counted the number
of leaves that have brushed your face?
The number of times
fall checkmated summer? If
you think fall is made
of apples, you are wrong, it
is made up of the future.