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

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

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