Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm: (Salt Modern Poets)

"Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm" playfully experiments at the edges where languages meet. These poems probe the technologies of language and the languages of technology. This is "technology", with an emphasis on the Greek root "techne", meaning "something that's made". The investigation then becomes one of the relation of language to "making". The seams where languages meet offer the most vivid site for this activity, whether indigenous languages inside Spanish colonialism, the natural language inside programming, or the migration of the codes and protocols of the Internet into human speech. It is one thing inside another! In three sections, "The Parts", "Semilla de Calabaza / Pumpkin Seed", and "Leaving Loss Glazier", these poems explore the topographies/e-geographies of such migrations, invasions, and revelations. They explore Hispanicity and the Americas, sounding such language play within the action of programming or in human speech, whether set in the landscapes of the U.S., Mexico, Costa Rica, or Cuba.In addition, many of these poems have used computer programming to test variants, to seed vocabulary, to build lexical culture, and to extend the poet's toolset to build beyond the flatness of print. In order to see language as so active, it becomes necessary to see it not as a singular and sovereign. It is not a whole but as an aggregation of constantly active parts, language as programming that makes language. Seeing language as parts of language expands all the possibilities that language within language opens. Such language is alive. This poetry is the living fabric of such activity.

Table of Contents:
I. The Parts The Apex The Com’ns ABCDE How I Was Attila in a Past Life On the Occasion of his Return to Civility Five Pieces for Sound File Proposition (Octave) Parsings – from *E* The Parts II. Semilla de Calabaza (Pumpkin Seed) White-Faced Bromeliads on 20 Hectares (An Iteration) Xochimilco Mezcla Mar La Habana / Mar O : L a H a b a n a III. Leaving Loss Glazier Windows 95 The Figures Olé / Imbedded Object Their DLLs One Server, One Tablet, and a Diskless Sun Direct Contact Del Rio Cache / Caché? To Achieve Excess, your Vocabulary needs to be at a Level Higher than that of your Competitors Icon Editing “There I Never went Looking for Extravagant Meanings” Balanchine’s Words to Printed Passage S c r o l l Gorton’s G. & Año Nuevo Laredo The Reed Heads “Wits Have Short Memories & Dunces None” The Lettrist

About the Author :
Loss Pequeño Glazier’s writing explores the multilingual folds of natural languages and computer code. He grew up in bilingual South Texas, as well as Japan, England, and California, and has traveled extensively worldwide since. Author of the award-winning Digital Poetics: The Making of E-Poetries (University of Alabama Press, 2002) as well as numerous digital poetry projects, he is professor of Media Study and Director of the Electronic Poetry Center, State University of New York, Buffalo.

Review :
I didn’t know Glazier’s work when I bought this collection. It’s published by the print-on-demand Australian/UK publisher Salt. I tend to but their collections simply because they publish them; they seem to have developed the habit of excellence.