The Curator's Notes

A gorgeously deft book, The Curator's Notes dares to question the Edenic. It asks, why not take the knowledge at hand hanging like "plump, purple orbs...begging to be eaten..."? And what can we grow with states of paradise being ever fleeting? This curator is a custodian of both specific and collective heritage, connecting daughter to mother to grandmother to wife to husband to the backyard garden to that garden of old where, as in the womb, knowing is limited and inevitable. In her sensual and tender book, Robin Rosen Chang has taken care to graciously offer us lyrics that swirl around and beyond our expectations until we accept both the churning waters and the radiant flight of circling birds as part of the story of life moving all too swiftly with and ultimately toward "the loam -/sand, silt, and clay."

-Vievee Francis

Robin Rosen Chang's poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, North American Review, Cream City Review, The Cortland Review, Vinyl Poetry, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. A native of Philadelphia, she has lived in different parts of the U.S. and overseas. She now lives in northern New Jersey where she is an adjunct professor of English as a second language at Kean University. An earlier version of this collection was named a finalist for Warren Wilson's 2018 Levis Alumni Award for a manuscript in progress. This is her debut full-length collection.