Maybe this book wasn’t for me, or maybe I need to read it a few more times to fully understand it.
Looking back, each part separated and rearranged created a separate story. The poems were completely different but also somehow connected. The poems covered drug addiction which seemed to be the present, and war which seemed to be the past. The world continues despite all the damage, but how can we continue through all the destruction?
I enjoyed the LOTR reference, but despised the mention of Covid.

Interesting but not super mind blowing for me.
Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton for the ARC!

Steven Duong’s "At the End of the World There Is a Pond" charts a gentle but intentional path through the shuddering aftermath of crisis.

If you haven’t been paying attention, the world is in a pretty dire state. We must live with grief, but we must also choose whether we will be unmade or animated by it. Duong insists upon the latter.

So many poetry collections reckon with destruction—a desire to reach a conclusion and start a new sentence, a hope to be free from our obligation to outmoded syntax. The problem is that while it’s very easy to imagine the end, it’s very difficult to imagine a beginning.

Fitting comfortably alongside Franny Choi’s "The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On" and Diana Khoi Nguyen’s "Root Fractures," Duong’s poems constantly look past the feeling of finality. Nihilism is a privilege, and it’s one that isn’t afforded to the speaker here.

More importantly, it’s also a waste.

Readers are constantly led to the tranquility of the titular pond when chaos might be more comfortable. These poems aren’t afraid of violence, as seen in the aching “Ordnance” and its depiction of war's blunt stupidity, but they also refuse to stagnate there. As one might expect from the book’s title and cover, fish are a recurrent motif, and they offer a fitting image and set of poetics for the work—there’s something primordial about fish, almost alien in the way they slip shapelessly through water. Similarly, these poems are delightfully amorphous, moving through shifting forms and themes, addressing racism and Rico Nasty without so much as a ripple. Duong writes with such an intuitive hand that every line feels inevitable, but what makes the collection so special is that each poem also feels like an argument for intentionality.

One highlight is “The Living,” which is a gorgeous depiction of persistence as resistance, a reminder of how life holds beauty and ugliness in such close proximity that it’s impossible to imagine one without the other. It’s a succinct representation of the book as a whole—for hope to carry meaning, it must first accept the full weight of how horrible things actually are.

The end is here. What’s next?

4 / 5 stars

Thank you W. W. Norton & CompanyNetGalley for the ebook ARC. I'm very grateful to review this book.

While I enjoy poetry, and write it quite a bit myself, there are many poems that were hits. But there are also some that went over my head. I noticed a lot will say something then say another seemingly arbitrary but connects…somehow. It will take a few reads but there is definitely something here.

But what did I like? My favorite are how the ways this poet begins, ends, then continues. I love the beginning and ending lines of each poem (they will either catch you off guard - in a good way - and intrigue you or make you ponder more of what was said). One I thought of were the “novel” poems because I thought it was a poem that should've been taken out because it felt incomplete. But then it came up again in another poem called… “novel,” which is intentional and a great continuation. I love that there is no “II” or “cont.” but it's just simply continuing, which aligns with the river and stream imagery this collection depicts. I also enjoyed the “tattoo” poems that continued back to back, unlike the “novel” poems that were scattered throughout.

I love the beginning and ending (parts I and IV) but felt meh about the middle. There were poems I enjoyed, but it didn't impact me because of the complex imagery and comparisons this author uses. I don't think it's a bad thing, but it's definitely something everyone should know and realize it's definitely not something they'll understand right away.

I personally hope to get this collection because there are things that stick with me, such as the author using words like wet and whet or how a story will just end in a lake, where the stream or river will end. Powerful. This collection isn't perfect, but I enjoyed a good amount of it.

I also enjoyed the LOTR references.

“At the end of the world there is a pond.” By Steven Duong is a creative, Introspective, and modern collection of abstract poems that deserves to be studied.

Modern, funny, existential, and tragic. I really enjoyed this collection and connected to a lot of the feelings in these poems. We’re all feeling and seeing a lot these days and, there’s just an endless amount to process. This book, I felt, acknowledged and pointed a finger to some of them as a way of beginning to heal and keep going, all the while knowing we might get shot in the back again at any moment.

I’m definitely an amateur when it comes to poetry (but an enthusiastic one!), and I felt that lot of clever things were done with format and line breaks here, too, which raised this one up for me especially. Truly, I think the author did a great job here, and I’d like to read more of his work in the future. That is, if we all get to keep on going for a while. Here’s hoping.

Thank you NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company for an ARC of this book!

This was a fast and though provoking collection of poems. One element I really enjoyed was a running narrative surrounding the poets venture to writing a book. This aspect of a narrative elevated the discussion surrounding race and culture.

Although this was a relatively quick read, I think this collection could have done with a few more poems, and a slow down in pace. Maybe it was the Kindle formatting, or the brevity of some of the lines, but many of the poems and pieces in this collection felt rushed.

Thanks NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company!

In a world of shitty poetry that's literally just,

"this is a sentence

followed by another sentence,

italicized text"

Duong's poems are a breath of fresh air to be sure. There wasn't a single bad apple of the bunch. They were all quite beautiful.

Something I could see people having a issue with is the repetition. However, in my opinion it's done to emphasize the messages and imagery. So this definitely didn't bother me here!

This was a spectacular debut collection. Some of the lines in these poems were deeply emotional. I enjoyed the way the author played with a variety of poem types, as well as used the shapes of the lines on the page as well.

What a surprising collection of poems! This book spoke directly to what I love so much about contemporary poetry. It is full of words and phrases that shape themselves into something beyond what they are. I absolutely loved the raw and unflinching way the author looks at certain topics. Very happy I read this one.