Post Human

In his seventh poetry collection, Pritts (Right Now More Than Ever), director and founder of independent publishing house H_ngm_n, leads readers through a poetic dystopia that reveals the fragility of the human relationship with technology. Through his humorous and poignant poetics, Pritts breaks open the post-human, a term largely understood as the interconnection of humans with machines, and admits with mournful reluctance, "Every person that I ever loved/ Is just a trace on the screen today." Pritts underscores the desire for connection not only with others, but with himself within the post human world. He acknowledges "I forget myself" and "I forget how to be solid" as he longs for "a scattering of delicate color/ just starting." In four sections%E2%80%94"Pattern Exhaustion," "No Filter," "Ship of Nails," and "Life Event"%E2%80%94the individually untitled poems work as a reckoning with the anxieties of digital life. The sections are distinctive in their formal experimentation, such as the unusual enjambments in "Pattern Exhaustion" or short poems in "Ship of Nails," which adds to the innovative feel of the collection. Weaving his poems together as a meditative critique of technology and its numbing effect on the everyday, Pritts asks readers to imagine other possibilities amid "this daily flood/ of ephemera, this electronic life." (May)