About as bleak as poetry comes, but without ever sliding into empty miserabilism; it's more of a contention with and reflection of the unsatisfactory state of the world. Choi understands dystopia as a present reality rather than a speculative fiction. The first few poems here are among the best I have read in years. The rest of the collection doesn't quite keep to that level, but it ends strongly and never dips too far below a baseline of excellence.

I did enjoy this poetry book but I feel like I didn’t fully understand a lot of the poems or they went over my head.

Thank you to Net Galley for giving me an ARC for an honest review.

I had not realized I didnt submit my review for this book but I do have a review of this book across several episodes of my podcast The Poet & the Reader in January, February and during NaPoWriMo episode in April.

Franny Choi’s third poetry collection, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, is a reflection on calamity in all of its forms: the public, the personal, the internal, the external. Concerns about humanity’s impending extinction collide with Choi’s fears about the mortality of herself and those she cares about, highlighting the inextricable nature of both issues. However, despite the chronic finitude of everything around us, Choi still argues for a kind of humanist continuation that transcends life, blood; even memory. She suggests that even what we consider ‘unprecedented,’ such as the calamities that plague our current times, are merely a reprisal of the past.

“Catch up—it’s the anniversary of the aftermath / of another bad massare, and I’ve got plenty of seats,” Choi writes, in her poem “Good Morning America.”

The sting and novelty of disaster is one that all of us relate to, as it racks us with shock and then numbs up with boredom. Choi reminds us of this in “Science Fiction Poetry,” where she writes “Dystopia of hold music; / Dystopia of platitudes; / Dystopia of garbled logic spun and spun in the head…,” the list exhausting, painful, almost tedious to read in its repetition. She then writes, “Dystopia isn’t there something else besides; there must be; / some sequence that ends in anything but a cold loop.” Are our actions doomed to be mere repetition? Is there an alternative to novelty and repetition, a third space in which action can exist? If action is just echo, can it be said to be truly temporal?

Choi plays with this idea in “Grief is a Thing with Tense Issues,” in which she asks, “is it possible to experience anticipatory feelings toward the past?” Her confusion manifests in her unconventional grammar, writing, “You were good. You lasted. And at last you were—I mean, you had been. / You will had been. / I will have missed your is.” That life is simultaneously linear as well as structureless is a core theme of the poetry collection, which Choi returns to throughout, with reliable grace and vigor.

It is difficult for poets today to find the balance between authenticity and good form, with many sacrificing the latter in pursuit of the former. However, Choi’s poetry collection is a breath of fresh air in that respect. Her poetry manages to be angry without being sloppy, profound without relapsing into truisms. Just when the reader gets used to the subject of calamity and mortality, Choi introduces a running thread about her Korean ancestry, and what heritage means for marginalized people.

“The demilitarized conductor bows as he enters each train car; an old woman sits with demilitarized bundles / wrapped in pink,” Choi writes in “Demilitarized Zone.” “At Pyeongyang I stop for demilitarized noodles. The Taedong River is not full of bodies.”

There is anger and grief behind Choi’s words, but this does not obviate the ability to create joy as well.

“What I want you to know is that we’re okay. Hurting / but okay,” Choi writes in “Dispatches from a Future Great-Great-Granddaughter.” “We’re surviving, though it’s true, / we don’t know what that means, exactly.” What does survival mean if calamities keep occuring? Moreover, what does it mean to survive when death awaits as a final destination—is the memory the final triumph, or the past existence of a memory? Choi doesn’t pretend to know the answer, and doesn’t provide one for the reader. She merely distills the pain and bewilderment of our modern zeitgeist, whose sense of time since the pandemic has been radically altered. None of us are sure whether the commonplace apocalypse is comforting.

Just as Choi enables us to see our modern moment more clearly, we see her grapple with her roots and memories in an exquisite manner, in particular the death of her first love as well as her feelings about her mother. We see similarly engaging ruminations in her past three collections, Soft Science, Floating, Brilliant, Gone, and Death by Sex Machine. It is clear that whether she is writing about political issues or recounting a memory with a friend, or exploring the more erudite topics of artificial intelligence and marine biology, Choi possesses a keen instinct for form that serves her well in all of her poems, enabling her to cover great swathes of content without any poem feeling out of place.

Choi’s eloquent thoughts about the present moment are valuable in understanding it more clearly. She does what many modern poets try and fail to do with aplomb, a continually relevant figure in the literary world whose skill only increases with time.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

I first became acquainted with Franny Choi’s work from her stretch in the late 2010s slam poetry circuit. She was one of few Asian Americans on the national stage, electrified with a poetics that spoke to the contradictions of communities split by loyalty to the American powers and integrity to their divided homelands. Her career proved just as splendent as she made her transition from stage to page with her 2019 breakout collection Soft Science (Alice James Books).

In The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, Choi's latest collection carries her trademark emotional acuity in recognition of the many aftermaths of apocalypse. She writes in her opening poem:

"By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended. / It ended every day for a century or two. It ended, and another ending / world spun in its place. It ended, and we woke up and ordered Greek coffees."

The poems in her latest collection blend an acuteness for past disaster and present catastrophe, whether considering self-imposed digital entrenchments, familial trauma, or the nascent pandemic. But where Soft Science quietly descended upon the engendering of systems with works such as "Perihelion: A History of Touch", her new poems speak with a greater urgency. In "Upon Learning That Some Korean War Refugees Used Partially Detonated Napalm Canisters as Cooking Fuel", a sequence meditates upon life in the aftermath of war.

"Somewhere in a prior world, a woman with my face / is scraping the seeds from an unborn hell. / All night, doom rang from the sky. And in the morning, / there are mouths to feed."

Choi recognizes the impossibility of dwelling on past tragedies when there are mouths to feed. A familiar narrative for those who have experienced the odd breakage of time in calamity. "Dystopia is the word for what’s already happened so many times, it’s the reason ______’s so cheap." This is the double-consciousness of trauma: that even if the end of the world is coming, on the other hand, didn't it already arrive?

This collection soldifies Franny Choi as one of my favorite poets! Her poems are always so beautiful, intentional, and gutting. This collection was especially cohesive, often returning to the idea of constant apocalypse ("the world keeps ending, and the world goes on"), family generations and past/future memories. Overall, amazing, just as I expected. I'll definitely need to reread this one! Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

This collection was really strong and moving, Choi has a very strong perspective, I have read it a few more times since.

Big thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I thought this was incredible. Franny Choi has made me a lifelong fan, I can't wait to see what else they write. Some of the topics were really difficult to get through (like the comfort women). The intermingling of the present, past, and future is used incredibly well. These poems are great.

Surprise, imaginative, witty and wise— this was a master class in form, content, how poems can stretch.

Every poem has a line, or a few, where the reader realizes that yes, this poem is for them. Franny Choi’s third collection The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On is full of such moments, lines that sing out, grabbing the reader by the throat – or by the hand – and holding them there. Sometimes, it comes at the beginning of the poem, as in “Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness” which opens: “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” (7). Others arrive at the end of the poem, a gut-punch like the lines that close “Good Morning America,” a poem of 9 3-line stanzas: “Come in, last year’s wreck, rent./ Grief’s a heavy planet, and green./ I know better than to call// each gravity’s daughter to my softest cheek./ I know, and I know./ So what?” (16). Each word clacks and bruises against the next, and the enjambment across stanzas forces both a forward rhythm and a pause. It is musical and discordant; it is a thing of beauty and a thing of pain.

Choi’s collection is about endings of all sorts, those that happened in the past and those still to come, those that are always already happening. The poems mingle historical despair with alt-historical hope, and always there is family. Dedicated to the author’s parents and grandparents, this collection rings with the memories of ancestors, and Choi calls on them like muses: “O, my badly loved grandmothers,// I kin you to me, facelessly.” (71) Present here, too, are the voices of community – friends and activists, people joining in protest and in the shared work of world-saving and world-changing, even in the face of uncertainty. Acknowledging the weight of the unknown, she writes in “How to Let Go of the World,” “I don’t know how to do it: hold their faces in my hands and tell them what’s waiting. How to teach any of us to follow this song, into what dark” (75). This time, those arresting lines fall neither at the beginning nor the end of the poem, but the reader finds them and knows: this poem has heft and should be shouldered, but carefully. Lines like these – poems like these – remind the reader of what is possible in poetry.

Makes me want to check out more poetry - a great collection! The poems deal with challenging topics throughout, very topical to this generation.

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On us a beautifully well done book of poems that are brutally honest about the condition of the world. Exploring topics of racism, immigration, and much more. Highly recommend.

“For years, you’ve kept one eye on the shadows swilling above the door, waiting for the arrival of the God of Doom. What to do now that he’s here, sipping coffee in our kitchen?”
One of my favorite poetry collections of the year, both charming an apocalyptic. I wish I could quote the entire book here. I just can't stop thinking about it.

This collection was, by far, the best collection of poetry I’ve read this year. It has also become my new favorite poetry collection. Sonically, the poems are stitched together in a way that holds tension and grief. Given the topics at hand, grief feels like an understatement. Choi expertly weaves the emotions of grief with hope. Hope for the future of us, the planet, and our relationship with the planet.

A wonderfully written collection, Franny Choi never fails to put me in awe with the way she strings together her sentences and crafts her narrative. She's very creative in the way she conveys her emotions. A collection that I will look back to from time to time.

This review redacted while HarperCollins workers are on strike. You can take these actions to help support the strike. Solidarity forever. Rated at a neutral three stars; real review will be up on my blog and edited here when HarperCollins' workers' demands are met.
- Donate to the strike fund <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeQVJmjUPqTNlhtaMRPvfqZu0ElX7FyMXeYINqjXSkDTulqbw/viewform">here.
- Email peopleteam@harpercollins.com with your support.
- Boost their message on social media.
- Sign the open letter <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdnCPzHMFs5bGjkV3hG7sekQYYrSVZGxha20hD1WMaWCvVlSQ/viewform?fbzx=-3133343821207724627">here</a>.

This book was very fitting to read as smoke from wildfires surrounded me. I thought these poems pointed out the reality that the world is falling apart around us whilst we might be missing it as we numb ourselves. The poems had a lot of energy and bite. I loved lines in these poems such as “This year was a layer cake of catastrophe” and “It wasn’t the last time I wanted to slap the light out of me”. Not all of the poems hit for me, but I appreciate what Choi was doing with these poems.

I should mention that when my first love died, I already had a stack of poems about missing him. I want to say this prepped me for widowhood—widowhood to the world, et cetera.

The truth: under the topmost sand is another, darker layer, damp from the ocean’s closeness. There were days I begged to be buried in it—cool, mutable grave, reprieve from the unrelenting sun—sun—sun—

From “How to Let Go of the World”

Franny Choi stuns in The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, the much anticipated follow-up to Soft Science. With her latest collection, Choi bridges ecopoetics and existentialism with painfully personal experiences, finding balance in her desire to grieve the destruction of the earth and the destruction of the self. She reminds readers that she has a finger to the pulse of modern science, highlighted throughout her last collection, but it is her return to vulnerability and individual loss that resonates most loudly here.

Throughout the book, Choi engages with chiasmus and temporality, using various iterations of inversion to explore what was, what is and what could be. She reimagines past events and anticipates the future as she works to process the present moment. “Unlove Poem” brilliantly blends these techniques as Choi navigates a lineage of trauma and occupation that connects her to her grandmother. “I come from a short line of women/who were handed husbands as salvation from rape,” she writes, before turning the phrase and admitting, “I’m a short lie of a woman whom men have wanted/to tear apart with their good strong hands. I mean, same.” The subtle shift from “short line” to “short lie” invites the reader to draw parallels between the marriage presented as salvation and rage disguised as desire.

“It Is What Is,” a palindrome poem, takes chiasmus one step further by applying turns of phrase to the structure of the poem as a whole. Choi grounds the poem in the knowledge that her mother “passes/that business, now closed, where–…a man killed three Korean mothers.” The poem hinges on the brief line, “Be Afraid?,” with the lines in the second half appearing in reverse order of the first half. The effect is haunting, as Choi expertly captures the recurring trauma, both of her mother passing the site of the murders each day and of the speaker’s continual realization that her mother puts herself at risk daily “to make a living.” The irony of the title’s seemingly nonchalant acceptance of this reality further emphasizes the deeply internalized sense that violence is always possible, in even the most mundane or routine moments.

Choi leans into structure throughout the collection, a detail that serves to highlight her commentary on the systemic failings that perpetuate environmental destruction, domestic terrorism and mental health crisis. “How to Let Go of the World,” for example, repeatedly makes use of the phrase “I should mention” to develop the underlying narrative of her “first love.” The first section of the poem includes a friend, Sam, asking if he should jump off a building, only for the speaker to later acknowledge that her first love “left Earth from a rooftop, though he didn’t jump. Or: he jumped only the way muscles do, on their way to sleep.” Choi surrounds this profoundly human embodiment of despair with images of environmental destruction that communicate a similarly internalized hopelessness driven by our unwillingness to care for the earth even as we witness and, at times, participate in its deterioration.

Poems like “Demilitarized Zone” and “Science fiction Poetry” take a different approach to structuralism, adding anaphora to the bountiful list of techniques Choi uses, rewriting memory by imposing “demilitarized zone” in place of what was almost certainly an occupied territory and emphasizing “dystopia” to comment on dozens of familiar experiences that no longer bring solace. Choi also uses the title “Upon Learning That Some Korean War Refugees Used Partially-Detonated Napalm Canisters as Cooking Fuel” in four poems situated one after another, again drawing on repetition to emphasize generational trauma and the ways in which our attempts to survive are rooted in state-sponsored destruction, whether from overt genocide or systemic oppression of certain populations.

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On puts Choi’s talent on full display as she masters numerous technical features of poetry while grounding her verse in relatable, urgent experiences. If you are only going to read one book of poetry this year, or assign one book of poetry for your next class, make it this one. Choi leaves nothing on the table, offering a collection that will satisfy students of poetry and casual readers with equal fervor. This is one collection you will want to carry with you for months to come.

A gorgeous and haunting whirlwind of dystopian energy, Choi weaves tales of her life and family from past, present, and future. Themes include immigration, death, human rights, and family. The writing is fresh and beautiful though I find the lengthy poems can feel overly verbose at times. Definitely worth having on shelves in libraries.

My favorite poems are: "Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness", "Good Morning America", "Grief Is a Thing with Tense Issues", and "Look."