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redinkscrawl · 3 months

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Redd Reviews: THE WORLD KEEPS ENDING, AND THE WORLD GOES ON by Franny Choi

Genre: Poetry

Major Tropes: Dystopia, utopia

Representation: Written by a queer Korean-American and discusses Korean-American issues, though the book is not explicitly queer (to my knowledge.) Little to no disability rep.

My Thoughts

Franny Choi’s The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On is a book about many things; apocalypse, dystopia, history, future, COVID, race, trauma, life… but it is also very much a book about endings, beginnings, and continuances. Choi’s lyrical play and word choice often leans into this theme, with poems like “We Used Our Words We Used What Words We Had” and “I Have Bad News and Bad News, Which Do You Want First” blending the beginnings and endings of lines and stanzas. The world has ended, after all, but it has also continued right along.

One time the world ended was in 2020. Choi’s poems are all tinted by a post-COVID perspective for me, and possibly for the author as well. It’s impossible for me to know if lines like “...stitched by girls who look like me but for their N95s…” refers to masks worn for COVID-related or other reasons (poor workplace conditions?), but my perspective on these lines post-COVID is certainly tinged. Given that the author does outright reference COVID in other poems, I find it hard to believe that these lines weren’t at least left ambiguous on purpose.

My second favorite poem in the collection was “Field Trip to the Museum of Human History.” Choi says this poem was inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin, and I clocked this immediately. What’s fascinating for me is that I checked The Winds’ Twelve Quarters, the only non-children’s book by Le Guin I’ve read (though I have others on my to-be-read shelf!) and I don’t believe I’ve read The Dispossessed, the story Choi says the poem was inspired by, nor any significant passages from it. Le Guin’s influence over the poem is just that strong. And now I have another book to add to my TBR shelf!

Related, I really enjoyed the scifi aspect of the book overall. I’m a big fan of exploratory, speculative fiction and have sought in the past a way to write a scifi or fantasy poem without it being a hundred pages. Obviously, Choi achieves this goal in “Science Fiction Poem” and “Field Trip to the Museum of Human History,” but even more than that she achieves this goal in “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On,” if in a more watered-down form.

My favorite poem in the collection was “We Used Our Words We Used What Words We Had.” I’ve always been slightly fascinated by nonsense poetry and literature, but most nonsense doesn’t make my spine tingle like this poem does. Instead of being silly and charming, this poem cuts deep at something… but I don’t know what. Sense is abandoned for lyricism; phrases are structured for rhyme, consonance and assonance, rather than for meaning. It’s a beautiful poem, and I don’t get it. But I think that’s the point. This poem certainly inspires me to play more with my words, regardless of hard meaning and in favor of effect. The piece is a playful celebration of sound, and I wonder if this has anything to do with her background in spoken-word poetry.

This collection of poems is somewhat haunting for me. I’m frequently a doom-thinker, almost obsessed with intrusive visions of my own death and the death of the ones I love. In my dreams I fair better, as brilliant revolutionary leader or crafty apocalypse survivor, but still the doom is there—why is the revolution necessary? What caused the apocalypse? This is not to say I believe this collection is possessed by an untoward sense of doom—I think any sense of doom the collection has is warranted and realistic. But it’s inconvenient. It forced me to face things I try not to face, for fear my sense of doom would grow greater. The moral of the story here is that there is no remedy, or at least no easy or permanent one. Even if we prevent one apocalypse, another will follow, almost certainly. That said, “Protest Poem” does give us some hope for changing the future… A sense of ‘something will always be wrong but at least it can be less wrong or for less time.’ Additionally, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On is greatly interested in knowing others.

In this way, Choi’s book reads like a manifesto of sorts, or perhaps half a manifesto. Most manifestos expose the wrong in the world and give a list or at least a sense of the policies, ideals, aims, etc. that would correct that wrong. Choi does a lot of the former, and much less of the latter. I struggle to see a call to arms in this book, despite the aforementioned “Protest Poem.” She establishes empire as the root of evil in some poems, but fails to present a solution to empire. I think this is intentional, and partially because I don’t think the speaker believes in any true, hard endings. Of anything, not just empire. Is this depressing? Possibly. But love doesn’t end either, nor compassion, nor progress. In this way, I believe The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On does carry some sort of hope, should you choose to read it that way.

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On is filled with poignant lines and exploratory poems with few misses, but a few pieces lost my attention at times.

Rating: 🌎🌎🌎🌎/5

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#poetry #franny choi #bookblr #poetry book #poetry book review #book review #butredd #korean american poetry #hope this one isn't too weird; it's modified from a response paper lol #dystopia #utopia

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worldfurnitureandbits · 6 years

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The King of the Unwanted

6D.Hi.Event.Ithel Wynn

Ithel Wynn sat on the steps of the dais where the great, black, vacant throne of The Ancient King loomed. He sat just beyond the edge of its shadow, hunched and pensive, turning over the choices and options that lay before him. His long, pale fingers traced patterns in the dirt and dust that had accumulated in this old, ruinous place.

This was not his castle. The throne on the dais was not his. The kingdom was not his. And yet he was called ‘king’--yes, Ithel Wynn, King of the Wastes, Ruler of the exiled, the unwanted, and the dispossessed. But he ruled little more than those beings that wandered this miserable, barren place.

The land, the kingdom, all the real power wasn’t his. He was a joke and a sham, the least of all kings. So low that none even bothered to attack or invade his kingdom... he had nothing to take, but the folk who’d already been cast out. He was voiceless in the great courts and his word hand no weight or vale. His subjects were only the desperate and scorned who swore allegiance to him for the sake of the comfort of having a king.

His title had been handed to him by the Lady of the Blackest Night and Brightest Day--the ruler of the Cthonic realms when he’d come of age and found himself unwanted by all the great nobles. What else could be done with a courtless youth of noble blood?

But there was a way to take power...

A smile played at his lips as he traced patterns in the dust on the step beside him.

I know what you are planning, a voice that crackled like dead leaves in Falltide whispered.

He looked up, but he did not turn to seek the body to which the voice belonged. There was no point. She was nowhere and everywhere. He had reason to believe that she had a form, but it was beyond his sight or understanding.

She was the Aos of this place. More Goddess than queen. And he was beholden to her.

“What of it?” he asked.

It is cruel. I do not care for cruelty, she said.

“And I do not care for being a kingdom-less King,” he said, turning his gaze back to the finger-tracings. “One of us must be unhappy, and I know that you are always happy to open your gates to new subjects. Why turn your eyes from one in desperate need?”

Those who come here have nowhere left to go. They are driven here. What you would do... You would take them from their world and drag them into this one. And that is cruel.

He stood and stared out into the room, his eyes focused on the unseen and unknown. His straight posture and the downward turn of his lips conveyed his defensiveness and resolve. “But what life is there for this child?” he asked. “They were doomed before birth. They were made to die. Their fate is already decided. This poor creature can do some good and it may have its life by serving my purpose.” As he spoke, he found his determination increased. “I see no wrong in that.”

There was no response.

If you do this, I promise you will suffer an agony that your kind seldom knows and it will be a pain greater than you can ever possibly imagine, the voice warned in the whispers of the wind.

Ithel Wynn lifted his chin defiantly. “Do your worst. And I will do mine. But you will thank me when I’m through and, one day, you will call me king and even the Lady of Brightest Day and Darkest Night will bow to me!” he declared.

Of that, the voice murmured, I have no doubt...

He thought he heard a smile there. But it seemed impossible to know if a thing that had no face was capable of smiling.

#6D #Beginnings #Ithel Wyn #The Wastes #Aos #Chaos World #Implications #Dark Choices #Event #Historical

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