Death by Sex Machine by Franny Choi

Death by Sex Machine
Author: Franny Choi
Chapbook of Poetry
ISBN: 978-1-943977-38-3
Publication Date: 9/7/2017
B&W 6 x 9 in or 229 x 152 mm
Perfect Bound on Creme w/Matte Lam
Pages: 48
Retail Price: $12.00

“To be clear, Franny Choi’s poetry has the extraordinary ability to solder with tender focus one moment, then rage like electrical fire in the next. In Death by Sex Machine, where fem-surrogate cyborgs of film and manga are impetus for understanding personal suppression of language, Choi gives us poems that are exquisitely uncomfortable with what is said and what is not said. As in the uncanny valley, where we are spooked by machines being a bit too human, but not perfect replica, this tightly controlled chapbook probes the uncomfortable terrain of the familiar but not quite safe. Still, below that troubling surface, the ghost in these machines has more to do with parallel language—absconded language, verbal attack, stutter. It’s as if only she understands their spoken code, and the rest of us need translation. These lyric, blunt, and beautifully sheroic poems serve as cyborg rosetta.”

- francine j. harris, author of play dead

Franny Choi is the author of the collection Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014). She has received awards and fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She is a Kundiman Fellow and a member of the Dark Noise Collective.