Ward Toward

by Cindy Juyoung Ok, Rae Armantrout (Foreword)

Yale Younger Poet Cindy Juyoung Ok resolutely searches for hope in spaces of fragmentation
 
“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 Palestine to divided Korea, from a bedroom that is the site of domestic abuse to a hospice ward that is the site of neglect. Ok plumbs these institutions of constraint, ward to ward, and the role of language, word to word, as she uncovers not only fragmentation and confinement but hope, humor, and human connection.
 
Using visual poetry and found text, she 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. How do pagodas, Seinfeld , ransoms, swans, and copays each make or refuse meaning? Ok’s energizing debut begins the work of breaking language to find the fissures where it can be reassembled into a new place of belonging.

Genres: Poetry, Literary Fiction

100 pages, Paperback

Published March 5, 2024

Reviews

[lucy. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. The subject matter & forms & diction from poem to poem kept me surprised. Ok’s poetic dexterity is on full display. More than surprised and impressed, I was moved. It is so evident that Ok holds a deep well of compassion for herself, her family, and all of the people of the world held in their own “wards”. Each of her words— sometimes tender, sometimes gruesome, sometimes quotidian— are saturated with her care.

[Brittany Mishra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection with it's word play and the adventure through syntax and grammar. There are a lot of great poems and lines here and I found some wonderful tidbits of language and information that was mind opening. The form of the poem DMZ was also creatively set up in the shape of north and south Korea which was fantastic.

The poems I connected less with were ones that were more intellectual, more burdened with a heavier scientific and elevated language. This comes from my own personal preference of wanting more plain language, simpler and straightforward that delivers a complex message. This is less a critique on the poet and the poems, and more that maybe I am not the one who could full grasp every poem in this collection.

The poems that spoke to me the most were the ones about mothers and mothering, of love and distance, and trying to bridge that distance.

And overall well rounded collection and I enjoyed Ok's guest editing and guest appearance/interviews on the Poetry Foundation's podcast in 2023. She asks wonderful questions in her interviews and I find I learn so much about poets and poetry from her voice.

[Ambrose Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty fantastic poetry. Finishing the book only made me want to read it again. I look forward to more OK poetry.

[Haoyu · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely stunning and devastating

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

from Orientation
Form outlives
us, but barely. (5)

Moss and Marigold
My country is broken, is estranged, is trying, we write,
as though there is such a material as a country, as
though the landlord doesn't charge rent for life lived
outside the house. When it comes to survival there is no right

way but there's no wrong way either. The country is
a construction, with each writing becomes more made.
I am making it now, here, to you—to say my country
provides an illusion of synthesis, as my landlord supplies

a fantasy of individuality. When I picture a country,
the ground is newly stormed—the snow a kind of revision
in its refusal of fission. But when I imagine the suburbs,
it is always sunny, with caution tape around oak trees,

landline lights blinking, and pictures of parents laid
as bookmark: janitors mopping against time, office workers
counting. The city's in my name and its only borders
are my body's, my counted and settled and made state. (11)

[Andy Oram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok has a fine ear, including an appreciation for overlapping sounds, and can spin modern free verse with a wonderful technique ("you honor the years you had person / permanence"). She ensures that this technique, including interesitng experiments in found poetry and in layout, intensifies—and does not interfere with—the concepts she expresses. These concepts can be quite disturbing, from mental illness and personal abuse to mass violence and climate devastation, but also has room for humor and humanity. One can surmise that the unconventional syntax Ok records from her immigrant parents and grandparents have tuned her senses to the unusual use of English that forms her creative free verse.

[Brice Montgomery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mystifying in the best of ways, and the language that emerges from the titular wards suggests that even the most abstract of abstractions has a physical weight to it.

This book weaves personal and political history together with the instability of multilingualism to create a collection that invites repeated reads.

[jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

good luck // how is // your feeling? i will pray // every morning for you. Sorry // that i am not good mother // who you can share everything. // but trust me // I love you more than

New voice new language so so good. Teared up over words in a new way, new favorite <3

In love, the teenagers’ // eyes widen and their /: grammar shrinks. Form outlives // us, but barely.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

it’s really hard to rate a deeply personal book of poetry, but this felt incredibly devastating, poignant, and intelligently created. loved it, not sure i would have appreciated it as much if i read it outside of a class / on my own

[k-os · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Cindy when I met her at a reading (former public high school teacher and debate coach!) and thought this collection was so impressive. I didn't always feel smart enough for it, but I loved it.

[Dyson Kona · Rating 5 out of 5]

really phenomenal, inventive, assertive, honest. feels like a lot of mediums syntehsized into poetry, even in unspoken ways/forms. #GOODread. one of the best poems i ever read had sienfield in it. how about that?

[Cook Memorial Public Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 2024 Staff Nonfiction Favorite for Kristina! For readers of The Historians by Eavan Boland and Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman.

Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore...

[Judah · Rating 4 out of 5]

“When bitten, ignore the instinct to pull, instead / pushing the latched body part further into / the biting mouth. This will lead to release, / though perhaps then it all starts again…”

gorgeous! powerful! emotional! driven!

[Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

"everything looks fragile in profile and do you ever sit / on the toilet wishing Jerusalem meant something to you?"

[Mya Matteo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To be my chorus / I first had to be a teenager who hoped / to kill the myth of the protagonist.”

Juyoung Ok doesn't write like anyone else. So singular!

CW: hospitalization, domestic abuse

[Peter Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a sincere, startling, unpredictable collection. The designed poems are brilliant, the language so shifty, and the "collaborations" with the mother's emails are devastating. Quite wonderful.

[Mary]

Form outlives
us, but barely.

[abhinaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

CINDY OK YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL. DISTRESSED BY DECISION AND EMBARRASSED TO REMEMBER?????? pls stop

[Connie]

from “Pale Music”: “I was in love, once, and when the mothering was over / we didn’t know where to look or how to hang our hands.”

[Shira · Rating 4 out of 5]

maybe one of the cleverest titles ever

[Jacqueline]

“I love you more
than I had loved you.”

Emotional book of poetry

[Ivan Zhao · Rating 4 out of 5]

banger, no notes

well i guess some notes in that i didnt love every poem but no notes