A stunning debut volume infused with apocalyptic overload, beginnings and endings, and all the ways we betray ourselves.
At the End of the World There Is a Pond is a book about aftermaths. Each poem comes in the wake of a deep rupture—the ruptures of mental illness and addiction, of migration and displacement, of violence, familial conflict, and ecological catastrophe—and yet the speakers engage with despair and playfulness in equal measure, always allowing humor, irony, and the exuberance of contemporary life to bend darkness toward something like hope.
Again and again, Duong’s writing excavates the unnatural conditions of a seemingly natural world, asking us to pay studied attention to its inhabitants. His poems force us to keep looking: at the betta fish trapped in its mason jar, the forest choked by invasive kudzu, the elephant wounded in a landmine blast. Through its relentless scrutiny and exacting care, this magisterial debut collection poses an impossible question: how can we reconcile a deep love for the world, in all its buzzing, wriggling aliveness, with an equally deep, self-destructive desire to leave it behind?
At the End of the World There Is a Pond is out now with W. W. Norton. You can purchase it from your online book retailer of choice as well as any local bookstore.
Advance Praise for pond
“Swimming in the aquarium core of this fluid, shimmery collection are questions of how to tend, how to make art and expansive life in a world often committed to utter unmaking. Duong teaches me that humor is another form of grace, that formal dexterity is nothing without emotional depth, and that love is perhaps not enough, yet still worth striving, diving, singing for.”
Chen Chen, author of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency
“Duong’s poetry is surprising and alive, expansive in its treatment of longing, history, and what it means to render art from experience.”
Raven Leilani, author of Luster
“I am grateful for Steven Duong's At the End of the World There Is a Pond, a brilliant book that is equal parts torment and torpor, but not without recompense and hope. I am grateful for its smart, strange patterning of coronations and abdications, how the speaker is the “king of not killing / myself” and the “king of not drinking bleach,” how drugs are “dethroned… with a finger” and guillotines feature in dreams. These poems may not always want to be in our world, but I always want to be in theirs.”
Natalie Shapero, author of Popular Longing
“In poems, striking, humorous, assured, Steven Duong turns and turns the world over again until we are seen anew. How admirable and affirming this belief in language to charm us into fresh relationships with our bodies, our inner provinces. This is poetry from a teeming intellect deserving of our most serious attention. The velocity and music of this book will steady you far into your days.”
Major Jackson, author of Razzle Dazzle
“These poems delight, surprise, and dive deeply into tricky relational waters, keeping us attuned to a sparkling aliveness even as we chart the true darkness of despair. I love this book for its playfulness and its grace, its sharpness and its tenderness; as a whole, it has added new layers to my understanding of the role of literature in survival. Winsome, finely wrought, funny, and profound, At the End of the World There Is a Pond is terrific company for the tumult of all times.”
Gabrielle Bates, author of Judas Goat