Catalog

Record Details

Catalog Search



Soft science : poems  Cover Image Book Book

Soft science : poems / Franny Choi.

Choi, Franny, (author.).

Record details

  • ISBN: 9781938584992
  • ISBN: 1938584996
  • Physical Description: 95 pages ; 23 cm
  • Publisher: Farmington, Maine : Alice James Books, [2019]

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:
Includes bibliographical references.
Subject: American poetry > 21st century.
Genre: Poetry.

Holds

1 current hold with 0 total copies.


Syndetic Solutions - Publishers Weekly Review for ISBN Number 9781938584992
Soft Science
Soft Science
by Choi, Franny
Rate this title:
vote data
Click an element below to view details:

Publishers Weekly Review

Soft Science

Publishers Weekly


(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In her second collection, Choi (Floating, Brilliant, Gone) creates an exhilarating matrix of poetry, science, and technology. The speaker states her method at the outset: "you start with// what you know / hands, hair, bones, sweat / then move toward what you know /// you are// not / animal, monster, alien, bitch." Poems riff on the work of British mathematician Alan Turing, whose 20th-century tests for the limits of machine thinking set artificial intelligence into motion: "The scientist called me hard, and I softened my smile. The scientist called me / soft, and I broke sentences to prove him wrong and what and what did I prove / then did I." These poems demolish known and weary binaries: "I am part machine / part starfish / part citrus / part girl / part poltergeist / I rage & all you see / is broken glass / a chair / sliding toward the window." Porn sites, tweets, chat rooms, and machine translations abound as Choi questions identity and consciousness in a world full of artificial intelligence, achieving in queer lyric form the most ambitious dream of A Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway's 1985 work that undergirds the collection: to speak what Haraway calls "a powerful infidel heteroglossia." (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Additional Resources