Ward toward / Cindy Juyoung Ok ; foreword by Rae Armantrout.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ok, Cindy Juyoung, author.

Armantrout, Rae, 1947- author of foreword.

Contributor:

Yale University Press, publisher.

Series:

Yale series of younger poets ; v. 118.

Yale series of younger poets ; volume 118

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry--21st century.

American poetry.

Genre:

poetry.

Poetry.

Physical Description:

xiv, 83 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, [2024]

Summary:

"There are places," Cindy Juyoung Ok writes, "where shaking is expected, loss is / assumed." In the 118th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, Ok moves assuredly between spaces--from the psych ward to a prison cell, from divided countries to hospice wards. She plumbs these institutions of constraint, ward to ward, and the role of each reality's language, word to word, as she uncovers fractured private codes and shares them in argument, song, and prayer. Using visual play in invented forms, Ok counters familiar narratives about mental illness, abuse, and death, positing that it is not a person's character or will that makes survival possible, but luck, and other people. The poems disrupt expectation with the comedy of institutionalized teens, nostalgia after the climate crisis, tenderness in a nursing home, and the wholeness of faltering Englishes. How do pagodas, Seinfeld, ransoms, swans, and copays each make or refuse meaning? Ok's resolute, energized debut shifts language's fissures to reassemble them into a new place of belonging." -- Provided by publisher (inside flap of dust jacket) .

Contents:

Foreword by Rae Armantrout

I.

Three act comedy

Orientation

Laugh track

"P.S. please forgive poor grammar"

Moss and marigold

Before the DMZ

Fissured

The orders

Pale music

Terms and conditions

The tyranny of representation

I was a highly awarded

Clustering

Park Street

Composition of a raft

Surviving inklings

II. Tally of what names

Ward of one

The five room dance

Shakeout

Nap plot

Patch

Leave her to heaven

Ten sessions

It is like

Ten words

In Atlanta

Bartender's bargain

Rights

Table of contexts

Curtain

III. The end of crisis

Home ward

Sunset, glory

River

Mama I am sorry

Faint

Setting

Sheds

"How is temperature in east?"

Ceremony

Answering my great-grandmother

Degeneration

Signs

At the end

Residue guidelines.

ISBN:

0300273916

9780300273915

0300273924

9780300273922

OCLC:

1402244323