Ward Toward by Cindy Juyoung Ok, Rae Armantrout (Foreword); 2024. Softcover.

In the 118th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, Ok moves 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.