Ulteriori informazioni
"Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, this debut collection of poetry follows a woman who designs women who don't exist"--
Sommario
CONTENTS
I.
INTERIOR LIFE
BEAUTY MASK
WORK FROM HOME
GROCERY SHOPPING
LISTENING MODE
CLEANING THE POOL
FLOWER
DECISION TREE
YOGA REVOLUTION
II.
THE NEW MIDWEST
EXPOSURE THERAPY
MOBILE
TROUBLE AREAS
HOST
VACATION DINNER
ATTRACTION
ANTICIPATORY DESIGN
DEAR ABDUCTOR
REPLICA
SHEEP
III.
DEEP LEARNING
HUMAN RESOURCES
WELLNESS
BIOLOGICAL CLOCK
INTELLIGENT OVEN
THE VALLEY
FATIGUE
HOUSE CALL
LISTENING MODE
HERE
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Info autore
Ryann Stevenson is the author of
Human Resources.
Her poems have appeared in the
Adroit Journal,
American Letters & Commentary,
Bennington Review,
Columbia Poetry Review,
Cortland Review,
Denver Quarterly, and
Linebreak, among others. She lives in Oakland, California.
Riassunto
Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry
Prize, Ryann Stevenson’s Human Resources is a sobering and
perceptive portrait of technology’s impact on connection and power.
Human Resources follows
a woman working in the male-dominated world of AI, designing women that don’t
exist. In discerning verse, she workshops the
facial characteristics of a floating head named “Nia,” who her boss calls “his
type”; she loses hours researching “June,” an oddly sexualized artificially
intelligent oven; and she spends a whole day “trying to break” a female
self-improvement bot. The
speaker of Stevenson’s poems grapples with uneasiness and isolation, even as
she endeavors to solve for these problems in her daily work. She attempts to
harness control by eating clean, doing yoga, and searching for age-defying skin
care, though she dreams “about the department / that women get reassigned to
after they file / harassment complaints.” With sharp, lyrical intelligence, she
imagines alternative realities where women exist not for the whims of men but
for their own—where they become literal skyscrapers, towering over a world that
never appreciated them.
Chilling and lucid, Human
Resources challenges the minds programming our present and future to consider
what serves the collective good. Something perhaps more thoughtful and human,
Stevenson writes: “I want to say better.”
Prefazione
- Galleys available for sales force by request, poetry media, select tech/AI media, regional (CA) media, academic media, booksellers and librarians; digital galleys available for download on Edelweiss
- Major media outreach, with special focus on major/national media to build author's platform nationally, as well as poetry and regional media, with targeted outreach to writers covering how robotic technology and AI is changing our culture
- Cover reveal and preorder social media and newsletter campaign in collaboration with Oakland/SF-based bookstore
- Major virtual launch event in collaboration with the Academy of American Poets to elevate author's platform
- Advertising with the Academy of American Poets, Poets.org and PNBA
- Newsletter promotion via the publisher to poetry and academic lists of more than 20K contacts
- Events and touring in CA and NY
Testo aggiuntivo
“The controlled anxiety of the present is captured brilliantly by this wary, lucid book. We live in an era when our humanness is worn down—by virtual beings, bots, synced devices, battery life, data, radiation, sulfates, and lead—so we must practice mindfulness to keep from losing track of who we are. This brave, tough book suggests that flowering maples, yoga, orcas, and the hands of our mothers might help us preserve our innocence. Human Resources is a lyric transcript of what it is to be a citizen at a punishing time.”—Henri Cole
