Why read How to Tell If You Are Human?

Book cover of How to Tell If You Are Human: Diagram Poems

Book description

With an entirely new approach to poetry and the art of collage, Jessy Randall transforms diagrams, schematics, charts, graphs, and other visual documents from very old books into poems that speak to the absurdities, anxieties, and joys of life in this modern age.

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Poetry

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Why read it?

1 author picked How to Tell If You Are Human as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Mark Yakich

Author

This book will challenge your notion of what a poem is or can be. Let it. Subtitled “Diagram poems,” these works mix both word and illustration to get at their playful effects. The illustrations come from “found” or ephemeral sources, e.g., a manual on textiles, or a guide to common beetles of North America, or a grammar on computer languages, or the layouts of American playgrounds. The interplay in the poems creates a wonderful uncanniness. The friction, say, caused when you read “You are special” next to a few numbered puzzle pieces in Figure A. and “Everyone is…

From Mark's list on poems for people who don’t usually read them.