In show two of two, Victoria Chang discusses Love, Love, her children’s novel written in verse—poetry written for children. Imagistic, literary, and philosophical writing is made easy and legible, clear and direct, to demonstrate how directly language can express one’s rich inner world. A ten year-old Chinese-American girl lives in a Detroit suburb, and Love, Love delivers the writer’s personal experience.

An excerpt from “Love,” by Victoria Chang.

Frontal Lobe

My Father’s Frontal Lobe—died

unpeacefully of a stroke on June 24,

2009 at Scripps Memorial Hospital in

San Diego, California. Born January 20,

1940, the frontal lobe enjoyed a good

life. The frontal lobe loved being the

boss. It tried to talk again but someone

put a bag over it. When the frontal

lobe died, it sucked in its lips like a

window pulled shut. At the funeral for

his words, my father wouldn’t stop

talking and his love passed through me,

fell onto the ground that wasn’t there.

I could hear someone stomping their

feet. The body is as confusing as

language—was his frontal lobe having a

tantrum or dancing? When I took my

father’s phone away, his words died in

the plastic coffin. At the funeral for his

words, we argued about my

miscarriage. It’s not really a baby, he

said. I ran out of words, stomped out

to shake the dead baby awake. I

thought of the tech who put the wand

down, quietly left the room when she

couldn’t find the heartbeat. I

understood then that darkness is falling

without an end. That darkness is not

the absorption of color but the

absorption of language.

Copyright © 2020 by Victoria Chang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 3, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.