"What is the cost to human creation of doing / these things that take time away from // your personal commitment to creativity?"
Cover Reveal: NO REST, a Diode full-length collection by Jason Koo, forthcoming May 15, 2024
What do we truly know? Are we deceiving ourselves when we think we know ourselves or the world?
Jason Koo's No Rest, a winner of the Diode Editions Book Contest, pursues these questions through a series of long poems like essays in verse that demonstrate the elusiveness of any answers even as they keep up the pursuit. The book begins on the day after the 2016 presidential election, when Koo discovers that his best friend from high school has killed himself by throwing himself in front of a train. The year he thought would be the best of his life—because of the unexpected joy of meeting his future wife and seeing his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers win the city's first championship since 1964—turns out to be just another triumph of his own self-absorption.
The book then returns to the start of 2016, unfolding along two arcs: one to the poet's fortieth birthday that August, the other spanning the next four years to the outbreak of COVID-19. With bitter honesty and irreverent, self-deprecating humor, Koo's No Rest explores the problem of how to emerge from the condition of the "exact same," the "saturation // of the same so-be-it that has always been" in American life, and the only truth that becomes clear over the course of this relentless, boundary-stretching book is that there is no rest to this quest. Juxtaposing personal failures against systemic ones, No Rest shows again and again that what we think is knowing is not knowing, doing is not doing, being is not being. We always find ourselves enclosed again in the "social fabric of fabrications," still trying to begin being in a more truthful, impactful way.
Praise
“No Rest is utterly compelling, heartbreaking, funny, tragic and brilliant. From beginning to end I was immersed. It's a book we are fortunate to have, and to which I will return again and again.”
— Matthew Zapruder, author of Story of a Poem and I Love Hearing Your Dreams
“I have been trying // and trying and trying and trying and trying / to make myself manifest to the American public,” Jason Koo writes in No Rest, a sidesplitting, entrancing tour de force of audaciously long poems alchemized from an inner chatter so authentic you’ll forget that this voice—with its expletives, its asides (“Um, no, but hold that thought”) and one completely justified use of “???”—is shaking you from a book. And what a sharp, unforgettable book this is. No Rest is a test of the “American cultural imaginary.” An upheaval of stereotypes about Asian American men. Jason Koo’s no-frills, give-no-fucks latest collection is a demand not only to be seen, but also to be remembered: “to make it impossible, I suppose, / to miss me.”
— Eugenia Leigh, author of Bianca
“Whether it’s riding the heat of high-stakes reveries, dazzling exasperations, long-simmered quandaries or the shocks of loss, No Rest is full of humor and alive with the real, offering one of my favorite literary experiences: a series of surprising, all-consuming rides through the particular life and mind of an indelible protagonist. Details and drudgeries of living become startling and strange at Jason Koo’s touch, anchoring dire questions about human relation and what defines a self. In navigating this era's technologies and categories, apps and lists, the limits and failures of connection and representation, we are lucky Koo does not shy away from the uncomfortable; he renders prickly human dynamics, unflattering emotions, complex philosophical ideas and more with brilliant clarity, employing astounding feats of syntax that somehow carry the spark and allure of extemporaneous speech. Keeping a reader’s attention for the duration of any long poem requires a rare level of talent and skill, and in Jason Koo’s No Rest, this rarity is on full display again and again. Here is a thought-provoking, incisive, honest, risky, hilarious, impressive and deeply affecting opus by one of American poetry’s most distinctive voices.”
— Gabrielle Bates, author of Judas Goat
ANDNESS
from No Rest, forthcoming May 15, 2024
I look at what I have to do with my day: edit poetry videos, comment on creation myths, update events gallery. What value do these things put into the world? Students get a response to their work—some value there, depending on how much they value the work. The poets in the videos get to see themselves reading, which they’ll value depending on how into themselves they are. Hardly anyone else will watch these videos that will take me several hours to edit and involve no lasting creativity on my part. Hardly anyone will look at the photos in the events gallery, which have already been posted online in several different places. The supposed value is to Brooklyn Poets, my nonprofit—not even “my” nonprofit, as technically it’s not owned by anybody— which appears then to be putting value into the world by creating these unprofitable videos at cost to itself simply for the sake of the readings: the value, supposedly, is in valuing something that would otherwise be neglected or perish if it wasn’t there to value it. I make an attempt at value for myself in writing about these things and reflecting on their lack of value, perhaps not their lack of but their questionable value—I think I am doing the work at least that I am “supposed” to do: writing. Where does this sense of value come from? Why do I think I am “supposed” to do something I do so little of usually compared to all these tangential things I do daily? Is it because I feel the most me, feel energized as an entity again if I do some thinking articulated into writing? When I publish this— if I publish it, which I probably will— will the value I derive from it be derived from the sense that people are benefitting from it? Or will it simply be derived from the sense that I had this vague, valueless activity validated by a cultural third party, so that my “value” as a poet continues to be confirmed or goes on the rise, so that I can feel this interior activity made into something external? I was listening to Beethoven this morning as I made coffee and English muffins, thinking I wanted to hear a kind of thinking on the air as I did these mundane morning things, and I thought of Wilhelm Kempff, whose playing of the sonatas I discovered and loved in college, but when I got on Spotify I searched for Beethoven and just played the first piano concerto I saw, not knowing who the pianist was but hoping it was Kempff, Concerto No. 5, the fourth most popular hit for Mr. Beethoven, and the playing, I could tell, was subpar, or at least subKempff, it wasn’t delicate enough, nuanced enough, kind of an Everyman’s Beethoven, a bit blocky, too obvious, which is maybe why this track was so popular, listened to by over 1.5 million people, and when I looked up the album it came from I saw the predictably generic Sony Classical cover art, rippling water backing the title, The Beethoven Journey, played by one Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. They did a good job. Or “Great job!” as my students would say. But one note after another was produced mechanically, the piano keys pressed as a computer might play them, or typed, so I switched the recording off and found Kempff, whose playing of Concerto No. 5 was conveniently #1 on his most popular list, also listened to by over 1.5 million people, which made me wonder why Spotify was shilling the other recording over this one, and from the first notes of Kempff’s piano I could hear the difference, the shimmering impression he was putting on the music, the beauty he was bringing out of Beethoven and I thought of how much little difference one fine artist makes, especially when that artist is interpreting another fine artist, who wouldn’t appear as fine without that artist’s help. Basically Beethoven is still coming through in both recordings, but in one you are hearing something distant and delicate, something else, precisely where Andsnes gets most obvious is where Kempff withdraws into the music, into himself, where we withdraw into ourselves as we stare into the distances of a world created. How much discipline and holding himself to high standards did Kempff have to commit to on a daily basis to create this sensitivity to the music? The standards are revealed in just one touch of one fingertip to the keys. Did Kempff ever spend a day editing piano videos or posting photos of pianists or commenting on beginner piano compositions by students? If so, which seems unlikely, did he spend the whole day doing that, wasn’t he probably practicing piano for a major part of that day? What is the cost to human creation of doing these things that take time away from your personal commitment to creativity? Do you end up sounding like Andsnes, like an And, instead of a Wilhelm Kempff? On Friday I made dinner for C and talked about some of what I’m talking about in this poem, this sense of how to hold yourself to a standard, this question of what the standard even is, and she cut all this highfalutin drama down to the ground by saying I sounded arrogant, entitled and anal, joking, or so she claimed, when I expressed hurt at the reductiveness of those terms. She said that she too was arrogant, entitled and anal, and I kept saying, That is so cynical, and she kept laughing, not understanding how serious these questions are for me, how much I am questioning the validity of everything I am doing in life and how I might do it better, or be better, what “better” even means, how we can know it, and yes these kinds of questions only arise, perhaps, for an entitled person, though I think that’s an entitled, arrogant person’s thought, but is that how I come across to someone I care about and respect who cares about and respects me? What hope do I have then? What is the point of any of this? We spent the night and next morning and most of the next afternoon in bed, kissing and fucking and talking and cuddling and sleeping, this is twice we’ve done this now, two dates have really become more like four, when I am with her I feel more value in my life than I do now or when I’m teaching or running a Brooklyn Poets event, though I’m not sure where this is going, she’s four years older than me and doesn’t seem interested in starting a family and is taking off for Mexico and California for the next six weeks. Do I even want to start a family? Or is that just cultural convention talking, is my sense of meaninglessness here derived from feeling that I am failing to meet a cultural norm of manhood nearing 40? My feeling that this is not all a grown man should spend his days doing? When we woke in the morning C noticed it was snowing outside and I checked my phone to see if my school had sent an alert saying it was closed, and it had, but it said only until 11 AM, which didn’t help me as my first class was at 1 and the snow was likely still to be falling when I left for work at 11. I looked out the window again and saw it was snowing really hard, the chances were pretty good that I would get another alert saying school was closed for good a few hours later, but it was already 8 AM and I had to make a decision to get up and comment on student poems before showering like I said I would the day before when I didn’t finish them because I had to go get ingredients to make C dinner, or stay in bed with wonderfully warm C for another hour and hope for that second alert, which I did, because I could be warm with C and still have time to comment on those poems at 9, but at 9 the second alert didn’t come and I had to make another decision: get up or cancel my classes myself and stay in bed? I thought about these new standards I was setting for myself and the probability of school cancellation, how much the students really needed this Friday’s class, couldn’t we cover what we were supposed to cover today on Monday? And I thought about C, wanting to stay in bed with her. So I got up and got my laptop and got back in bed and emailed my students that I was cancelling class. And I felt a little guilty about it but I knew not a one of them wouldn’t be happy about it, I told C it’s not often you have at the power of your disposal instant happiness for 38 human beings by not doing something, and so we stayed in bed and the second alert didn’t come and we had more sex and the snow tapered off as the weather forecast said it would and the sun came bolting through, creating a glistening from the trees and power lines, and I got up to make us coffee, bacon & eggs, which we ate in the sunlight, I complained of the sunlight as well as the bacon & eggs, which didn’t meet my standards, probably because I was an arrogant, entitled, anal asshole, and C smiled, we hugged and kissed and I picked her up and carried her back to bed, where we had amazing sex, twice, napping in between, staying in bed till after 3, which she predicted when I laid her down, saying, If we have sex again we’ll be here for several more hours, don’t you have things to do? And I said, No, all I have to do is comment on some poems, feeling a little guilty but not much, and then I checked my phone and saw that my school finally had sent that second alert saying it would close at noon, meaning it had only “opened” for an hour, which was ludicrous, suddenly I felt smart for cancelling my classes, if I hadn’t I would’ve left wonderfully warm C and commented on those poems and showered and gotten in my car at 11 and would’ve received that damn alert when I was already halfway to school, driving through snow somewhere in Connecticut, and I would’ve been extremely fucking pissed, and I never would’ve had this amazing sex, twice, in the afternoon, which was like Wilhelm Kempff to the morning sex’s Andsnes. Apparently the moral of this story is this: sometimes not holding yourself to high standards pays off, you save time you would’ve wasted, you stay in a warm bed with a lovely woman, you have mindblowing sex, twice, and you end up having more time to do those things you were supposed to be doing anyway.
Jason Koo is a second-generation Korean American poet, educator, editor and nonprofit director. He is the author of four full-length collections of poetry: No Rest, a winner of the Diode Editions Book Contest, More Than Mere Light, America's Favorite Poem and Man on Extremely Small Island. His work has been published in Best American Poetry 2022, Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, Village Voice and Yale Review, among other places, and won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and New York State Writers Institute. He is an associate teaching professor of English and the director of creative writing at Quinnipiac University and the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets.