The Sunday Poem

Our Sunday Poem today is "Slept" by Jennifer Chang -- a haunting piece rich in fairy tale imagery. It comes from the archives of Blackbird, an online journal from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Chang’s poems have been published in New England Review, The Indiana Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The New Republic, Gulf Coast, and other journals; and have been reprinted in anthologies including Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, Best New Poets 2005, and The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror Vol. 19. Chang lives in New Jersey, where she teaches creative writing at Rutgers University and is Communications Director at Kundiman, a non-profit organization for Asian American poetry.

A previous poem by Chang, "Obedience, or the Lying Tale," was featured on this blog back in September. 

The paintings above are from the "Briar Rose" series by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones.

   

Comments

[Grey Walker]

Now I see a forest of three-leaved trees....

I don't know exactly what Chang means, but to me, each tree has three giant leaves, spread like a ginkgo fan. The leaves vary slightly in color from one another, and the wind makes the forest ripple in slow, large gestures of green.