Literary reviews by Tim Love.
Warning: Rather than reviews, these are often notes in preparation for reviews that were never finished, or pleas for help with understanding pieces. See Litref Reviews - a rationale for details.

Wednesday, 12 October 2016

"Rain dancers in the Data Cloud" by William Stephenson (Templar, 2012)

Only 16 pages, but nothing's easily skipped - each poem parachutes you into a linguistic milieu. There's a relationship therapist, a terminal case, a bomb-maker, an online RPG gamer who's contacted by a math prof imprisoned in China, the Jewish experience, Yoda coming to terms with fame - "a star born is". We visit Barcelona, China and Florence. Several of the narrators are away from their culture or language, often doing something mundane. Words slip away from their original meanings, become jargon, trademarks, or symbols on a broken keyboard. And there's surrealism in "The Man Who Became a Syndicated Strip".

2 of the poems are online in Sentinel.

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