Humans
- Mark Gurarie (author)
- Elæ Moss (artist)
ISBN
978-0986050541Page count
98Keywords
Poetry, Prose, Hybrid, Experiment, Experimental, Music, Nature, Sound, Repetition, Extraterrestrials, Aliens, Sci-fi, Science FictionPublication date
2016Language(s)
EnglishPublication media type
Print DocumentPublication series
Unlimited EditionsEverybody’s Automat
In his debut collection, Gurarie experiments with absurdity, dissonance, and a patchwork of influences to consider the language of society in decline. Across four distinct sections, he explores the cultural influence of various musical forms (including pop, punk, and atonal composition), the synthesis of nature and machine, and linguistic alienation. The latter is represented by an invading alien dubbed “Resistant is Futile” whose muddled grasp of English is cobbled from advertisements and “foam operas,” resulting in comically forlorn thoughts on, among other topics, breakfast (“these embryos are overcooked/ and missing the shells”) and missing pets (“oh Lost Kitty of 718 228-5613./ On the fence post, this time”). Extinction and evolution — of humans and other animals, language, technology, and cultural fads — are recurring themes. Sense can be abandoned in favor of captivating imagery (“freedom is a twenty-two // year old bear princess / with a wolf mask / where a t-shirt ought to be”) and clever turns of phrase: “to choke / this impenetrable frog / eyes. I stare back, I rib it // vicariously.” Repetitive phrases act as a chorus, enhancing the poems’ musicality and anchoring the reader to the text. With his jarring riffs, Gurarie eschews logic for a rewarding immersion in discord: “Everything / is Empire in the Empire, but the Machine / loves you all the same.”
“Mark Gurarie’s Everybody’s Automat could be the offspring of John Ashbery and Ziggy Stardust. And yet these are poems only Gurarie can write. These poems inhabit a superhuman linguistic and psychosocial consciousness. Martians are muses, as are John Cage & planet earth, who all play supporting roles in this delightful and haunting debut collection.” — Ali Power
“The pitched quality of inventiveness in Mark Gurarie’s poems, is a worthy homage to the aleatoric musician John Cage and other musicians who inspire both the silences and contemplative notes of whimsy. The poems, like the music, however, are hitched to emotional states of being that are never distended or anemic, but curiously imaginative and responsibly resourceful to the core.” — Major Jackson
“Everybody’s Automat arrives like a hundred aliens wielding a thousand devices to process the glittering wreckage of the Anthropocene. The book’s as much of a party as it is a postmortem revealing how we spoke to each other, where we failed each other, and that we never stopped making music, even as everything went irreversibly wrong. Whether Mark Gurarie is one of us, one of them, or a little of both, I can imagine no fitter or better poet to ‘confront the alien that speaks of ourselves.’” — Mark Bibbins
About the Contributor(s)
Originally of Cleveland, Ohio, Mark Gurarie currently splits time between Brooklyn, New York and Northampton, Massachusetts. He is a graduate of the New School’s MFA program, and his poems and prose have appeared in Pelt, Paper Darts, Sink Review, Everyday Genius, The Rumpus, The Literary Review, Coldfront, Publishers Weekly, Lyre Lyre and elsewhere. In 2012, the New School published Pop :: Song, the 2011 winner of its Poetry Chapbook Competition. He co-curates the Mental Marginalia Poetry Reading Series in Brooklyn, serves as the Printed Matter Editor at Boog City, and lends bass guitar and occasional vocals to psych-punk band, Galapagos Now!. In addition, he is an adjunct instructor teaching online for George Washington University, a book reviewer, and a free-lance copywriter.
Elæ Moss is a multimodal artist-researcher, curator, designer, and educator. Seeking Speculative Solidarities, they employ analog and digital media to investigate human, institutional and ecological systems and to iterate open source strategies for ecological and social change. Recent projects have shown at La Mama Galleria, EFA Project Space, STWST/Ars Electronica, Usdan Gallery, Judson Church, the Segal Center, SOHO20, Dixon Place, and the Exponential Festival, among others. Select publications include Big Echo, Tagvverk, Vestiges, Matters of Feminist Practice, The Transgender Narratives Anthology, Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, The Brooklyn Poets Anthology, and Resist Much, Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance. Books include Ground, Blood Altas, Overview Effect, Sweet and Low: Indefinite Singular, Bodies of Work, and The Precarity Bodyhacking Work-Book and Guide. Moss is a Professor at Pratt Institute, and the developer / founder of the Operating System + Liminal Lab. More at: https://onlywhatican.net and https://theoperatingsystem.org.
