World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On

144 pages

English language

Published March 27, 2022 by HarperCollins Publishers, Ecco.

ISBN:
978-0-06-324008-7
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4 stars (1 review)

Many have called our time dystopian. But The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On reminds us that apocalypse has already come in myriad ways for marginalized peoples and calls us to imagine what will persist in the aftermaths.

With lyric and tonal dexterity, these poems spin backwards and forwards in time. They look into the collective psyche of our years in the pandemic and in the throes of anti-racist uprisings, while imagining other vectors, directions, and futures. Stories of survival collide across space and time--from Korean comfort women during World War II to children wandering a museum in the future. These poems explore narrative distances and queer linearity, investigating on microscopic scales before soaring towards the universal. Throughout, Choi grapples with where the individual fits within the strange landscapes of this apocalyptic world, with its violent and many-layered histories. In the process, she imagines what togetherness--between Black and …

4 editions

The Apocalyptic Poetics of Everyday Life

4 stars

This is a surprisingly good poetry collection. I pick up recently-published poetry books from time to time, and I don’t normally love them. Choi’s book is different.

There are all the major trendy topics in here (as of 2022): recognition of difference and diversity, attempts to “touch grass,” and trying to find meaning when the world doesn’t make sense.

I don’t know how well the individual poems stand in terms of verse and meter, but the imagery was beautiful.

Even so, I think this one will be forgotten in ten years, regrettably so. It feels very much a product of its moment, and I do think this is valuable, but I’m not sure that future readers will.