Franny Choi’s The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On was published yesterday. The book engages with the perilous now—the climate crisis, political cruelty, marginalization—while reaching back in time (the comfort women of World War II, for example) to speculations of the future. Choi’s vision is wide-eyed, giving us one horrific apocalyptic gesture at a time, rather than a big “end of the world” moment. They point out generations who have already lived through their own apocalypse in such poems as “Upon Learning That Some Korean War Refugees Used Partially Detonated Napalm Canisters as Fuel.” When reading Choi’s book I was reminded of Danielle Moodie aka @DeeTwoCents. In her post “Thoughts this morning on the end of the world,” she says “This is actually the worst part…I gotta work through this shit?”
https://twitter.com/DeeTwoCents/status/1578404945874886657?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
While Danielle Moodie is darkly funny, Franny Choi writes with reverence and tenderness as demonstrated in these lines: We knew the end was/coming here./We knew it/and like idiots—like perfect idiots—/we stayed.
The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On is a wise and engaging collection. You can read Choi’s title poem here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151513/the-world-keeps-ending-and-the-world-goes-on
Congratulations, Franny!
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