A review by valerieloveland
Circle by Victoria Chang

3.0

Victoria Chang's book [b:Circle|403460|Circle (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry)|Victoria Chang|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174452553s/403460.jpg|392839] is separated into three different sections: "on quitting," "five year plan," and "limits." All the sections were good, but I really liked the section on quitting, which were about the dark side of love/relationships. I felt like those poems were more emotionally charged. I especially loved when The Man in the White Truck, a man that the speaker was having an affair with, shows up in some of the poems. He has a poem about him with "The Man in the White Truck" as the title, and then he appears in a few other poems. It was like seeing a recurring character in a tv show. It was fun to see him, and get more information about their relationship in other poems.

Chang had a lot of historical women in her poems, and I liked seeing how women dealt with thier lives in other time periods.

Some of the other poems in the book, while well-constructed, and beautiful, were a little disconnected, emotionally.

I read a lot of Chang's poetry online, and really loved just about all of it. I picked up her second book [b:Salvinia Molesta: Poems|3381724|Salvinia Molesta Poems (The Vqr Poetry Series)|Victoria Chang|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515fzjxFwWL._SL75_.jpg|3421384]. I am looking forward to reading it because I suspect those poems will be closer to the ones I've been reading online than to the ones in her first book.

My favorite poems in the book:

The Man in the White Truck

Holiday Parties

Seven Changs

Seven Reasons for Divorce