Very intense, heavy, nuanced poems about death and loss. As the poet contends with the deaths of her parents, she also contends with her own identity as a parent herself. The obit poems about Chang's parents are complemented by the tankas, which are more about children and the future generations.

Beyond the form, I admire the boldness of Chang's personification in particular--most poets use this to varying degrees of success, since it can quickly become silly or maudlin. Sometimes, even in this collection, it can be absurd. But maybe that's the point. Giving life to the inanimate after a death, these objects and abstractions become imbued with the living memory of the deceased. This is what is bequeathed to those experiencing loss. You can't read Chang's too literally, otherwise nothing would make sense. Metaphors are used to approximate the feeling and movement of grief, which is often described as indescribable.

I will say that the section after Plath is impenetrable and feels very out of place with the rest of the collection. The obit poems and tankas felt complementary, but this one felt unnecessary to include. Not every poetry collection needs to be 100+ pages.