Ward Toward

Cindy Juyoung Ok writes, edits, and teaches poetry. Rae Armantrout is the award-winning author of eighteen books of poetry, most recently Finalists, Conjure, and Wobble.

“Cindy Juyoung Ok’s unpublished manuscript won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. . . . We can see why.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post “Ok in her refreshing debut uses language to push against the staid edges of the status quo, exposing the tenuous and often contradictory beliefs that seemingly undergird reality. With their capacious perspective, these verses bear witness to the hypocrisies of convention on the personal and global scale.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)“In Ward Toward, Ok takes language apart: questioning its origin, proposed syntax, and meaning to separate the form from its built-in rules.”—Chloe Xiang, Los Angeles Review of Books“A quietly devastating testament of domestic violence.”—Judges of the 2024 Forward Prize for Poetry (Winner for Best Single Poem—Written)“Cindy Juyoung Ok’s debut moves through spaces seamlessly—psych ward, hospice care, nation upon nation—and unites them through an impressive articulation of their violences.”—Summer Farah, The Millions, “Must-Read Poetry: Winter 2024”2024 John Leonard Prize finalist, for the best first book in any genre, sponsored by the NBCCLos Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, Poetry categoryWinner of the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem—Written, sponsored by the Forward Arts FoundationShortlisted for the 2025 Maya Angelou Book Award, sponsored by the Kansas City Public LibraryAssociation for Asian American Studies Book Awards, Outstanding Contribution winner, the top prize in the Creative Writing: Poetry category, 2026“Ward Toward is a piercing debut: a startle, a fissioning. These poems fragment, cleave and cluster, seek new grammars, strategize not for cohesion but proximity, convergence.”—Donika Kelly, author of The Renunciations“Reading Cindy Juyoung Ok’s poems is like witnessing the Big Bang in close-up slow motion—infinite collisions of syntax, thought and emotion—pyrotechnic and glorious. This debut volume spectacularly showcases an utterly singular poetic sensibility.”—Monica Youn, author of From From“A delectable, scintillating read that leaps long into strangely elegant foray. In the dwelled, survived, and warded world, this poetic is utterly remarkable and calls for a rainstorm of awards.”—Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, author of Look at This Blue“Cindy Juyoung Ok is a wonderfully inventive poet. . . . She writes in many forms, some invented, and her constant impulse is to break the frame, to escape oppressive containment.”—Rae Armantrout, from the Foreword to Ward Toward