THE WORLD KEEPS ENDING, AND THE WORLD GOES ON
Poems
From acclaimed poet Franny Choi comes a poetry collection for the ends of worlds—past, present, and future. Choi’s third book features poems about historical and impending apocalypses, alongside musings on our responsibilities to each other and visions for our collective survival.
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.
With lyric and tonal dexterity, these poems spin backwards and forwards in time–from Korean comfort women during World War II, to the precipice of climate crisis,
From acclaimed poet Franny Choi comes a poetry collection for the ends of worlds—past, present, and future. Choi’s third book features poems about historical and impending apocalypses, alongside musings on our responsibilities to each other and visions for our collective survival.
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.
With lyric and tonal dexterity, these poems spin backwards and forwards in time–from Korean comfort women during World War II, to the precipice of climate crisis, 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. As she wrestles with the daily griefs and distances of this apocalyptic world, Choi also imagines what togetherness–between Black and Asian and other marginalized communities, between living organisms, between children of calamity and conquest–could look like. Bringing together Choi’s signature speculative imagination with even greater musicality than her previous work, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On ultimately charts new paths toward hope in the aftermaths, and visions for our collective survival.
- Ecco
- Hardcover
- November 2022
- 144 Pages
- 9780063240087
Buy the Book
$25.99
About Franny Choi
Franny Choi is the author of two previous poetry collections, Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019) and Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014). Her poems have appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. They are Faculty in Literature at Bennington College and founded Brew & Forge, a project that aims to build connections between writers, artists, and organizers.
Praise
Named A Most Anticipated Book by: LitHub, Vulture, Time
A PW 2022 Holiday Gift Pick
“Franny Choi’s poems are both of the world and transport us to another. I’ve taught her writing in multiple contexts for years. I’m thrilled to now have this new collection of her poems to savor and to share. The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On is a luminous, jarring, and gorgeous gift. Grateful to have these poems as a compass in these times.” — Mariame Kaba, author of the NYT bestseller We Do This Til We Free Us
“In their arresting poetry collection, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, Choi considers the many ways in which the unthinkable has already happened for the most marginalized around the world by way of catastrophe, war, and devastation.” — Time
“Franny Choi’s new poetry collection serves as a survival guide for what it’s like living through ‘historical events.'” — Vulture
“Franny Choi is one of my favorite poets and her new collection does not disappoint. These are incisive, elegant poems. There is a throughline of grief in many of the poem but the work demonstrates both stylistic and intellectual range. So excited for people to get into this book.” — Roxane Gay
“A marked attentiveness to craftsmanship and the niceties of language enlivens the poems in Franny Choi’s urgent, stirring [collection]. A fearless shifter of form, Choi switches moods and modes to tackle such topics as social unrest, climate change and her Korean heritage. Formidable themes like the nature of tragedy and the human capacity for renewal lend a timelessness to her work. Choi’s collection will awaken and inspire readers…her attitude is contagious.” — BookPage (starred review)
“Lines like these–poems like these–remind readers of what is possible in poetry.” — Shelf Awareness
Excerpt
Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness
Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe.
Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in.
I want an excuse to change my life.
The day A died, the sun was brighter than any sun.
I answered the phone, and a channel opened
between my stupid head and heaven, or what was left of it. The blankness
stared back; and I made sound after sound with my blood-wet gullet.
O unsayable—O tender and divine unsayable, I knew you then:
you line straight to the planet’s calamitous core; you moment moment moment;
you intimate abyss I called sister for a good reason.
When the Bad Thing happened, I saw every blade.
And every year I find out what they’ve done to us, I shed another skin.
I get closer to open air, true north. Lord,
if I say, Bless the cold water you throw on my face,
does that make me a costume party. Am I greedy for comfort
if I ask you not to kill my friends—if I beg you to press your heel
against my throat—please, not enough to ruin me,
but just so—just so I can almost see your face