Jean Day LATE HUMAN
The poetry in Jean Day’s latest is funny and biting, and also disorienting in a useful way. The reader will recognize the clusterfuck of signifiers at reference in LATE HUMAN as the same ones they daily navigate and, as we are dealing with Day’s particular kind of subtly acid wit, a sharp but empathic mind organizes and sounds out the contradictions. It’s a book that is altogether of the world the author lives in, but also more than that. Life feels altogether atomized, and can poetry do anything against it? It can be poetry, a welter of possibilities, or a litany of sensations, truth told slant, or taking off the top of our heads, leaving us with a sense of new ways for living on this planet. But it can’t singlehandedly topple regimes, feed striking workers, or empower the oppressed. One thing we know poetry can do is help us draw together something like a representation of our material and spiritual existence. Jean Day here uses a fine-toothed presentiment to suss out the partic