Poetry Readers Challenge discussion

If you’re looking for escapist poetry, Franny Choi is not your poet. The World Keeps Going, and the World Goes On will prove the point well enough, as it is rife with the political poetry of outrage.

Yes, this is unusual. Politics makes for difficult subject matter, after all. Poets who go there risk devolving into rants. I would say, overall, that Choi avoids that pitfall, however. Many of her poems contain terrific imagery and creative thoughts. I admit that, for me, some of the poems succeed more in part than as a whole, but that’s certainly not true of every poem in the collection.

Here’s an example, one that asks the reader’s help in making sense of the news:


Poem With an End in Sight

I don’t have a brain for anything
that’s happening on-screen. I don’t

have a brain for the men yelling over
each other, I’ve done an amazing job,

their cheeks flushed and flaking. I’ve done
an amazing job. I have two degrees

and couldn’t have saved anyone, couldn’t
have saved a dog. I have a million ideas.

I have last year’s ashes in my throat, stories
stuffed so full of morals they bleed sugar.

Midnight, and my stomachs drag
like nets through a river. Dawn,

and I’m out on the blacktop, praying
to no one, so no one prays back.

I know I should want to be torn open
by the failures of hope, but here’s what I want:

a tight circle around everyone I love;
a stove that doesn’t burn. O year,

O shitstorm, it’s impossible to be alive, impossible
to be dead. So, brainlessly, I tongue the news

again, instead. I have no condition but this:
ill-timed optimism; a disturbing tendency

toward pleasure; also, bad at reading tone.
For example, is this a hopeful poem,

or a hopeless one? If I write, there’s nothing
to be done, it’s a bird in the hand, i.e.,

worth its weight in dead bird. It’s so corny
to call for the tyrant’s head again, and yet.


Clever, no? Lots of variety in this collection – long and short, left-justified and right-justified (the print, not the politics), stanza formations, etc., but always with an intelligent approach that remembers to employ poetic elements liberally (back to politics!).

Maybe, then, Choi might be your cup of tea? If you wish more poets would roll up their sleeves and enter the fray, I’d say the yeahs have it. If you feel like the front pages you read every day push you to the limit already, I hear a hearty nay.

Ken wrote: "If you’re looking for escapist poetry, Franny Choi is not your poet. The World Keeps Going, and the World Goes On will prove the point well enough, as it is rife with the political poetry of outrag..."
I'm tempted to look at her work...

I am somewhat glad I missed this review earlier this year so I could read it NOW.
I've not read Choi before and much enjoyed the poem you generously provided, Ken. Thank you.
This one might be on my list immediately. Poor purse.