The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, Franny Choi

I first heard the title poem of this collection during a book launch held over Zoom during pandemic lockdown, and it lingered with me for days — “I was born from an apocalypse and have come to tell you what I know” — it seemed so prescient (this was published in DECEMBER 2019?!), but then, that was the idea, the ongoingness of apocalypse (The apocalypse of bees. Border fence apocalypse. Coat hanger apocalypse.). The book was published awhile later, in 2022, and I only finished reading it now, when it felt sort of uncannily apropos — once again, Trump, yet anew, apocalypse. It’s exactly the book for our times — but also, for all the times that came before, and the ones still to come, too, and that’s the point, and it’s brilliant, and beautiful, and fierce.