Fast

In her first all-new volume in five years, the multi-prize-winning poet Graham examines life, death, and illness, considering how to live and die in an era of technology, of bots that clamor and whisper from voices on the ocean's floor to those beyond the grave: "How can I find myself again. In this world. I want to live in this world." From the clang and claustrophobia of an MRI machine to dementia's labyrinth and the final silence of death's room, Graham repeatedly asks readers to "Define human. Where do you find yourself. Is it/ worth waiting around for." In poems both complicated and inventive, she constructs and deconstructs her core ideas through multilayered words and phrasings, compelling readers to feel what it's like to be human in a posthuman world. "Think-in, squint-in, shoo-in, heroine, citizen, pleistoscene…" says Graham, weighing the possibilities, with characteristic punctuation that gives readers pause and thrust and transformation.