The Digital Self: Poems and Illustrations
Wesley R. Bishop
Alabama: North Meridian Books, 2024
We create countless traces of ourselves with every day spent in the digital sphere. What we like, what we share, what we rage post on, what we email, twee, record, and hashtag.
We are a literature in the seas of electronic connectivity.
These poems explore our digital selves and wonder what will happen to our traces after we are gone?
What these poems argue is that it is possible to be hopeful while scrolling through dystopias, utopias, and online enclaves.
Big Belly (from The Digital Self)
My big belly
rolls soft, and kind.
“It will cause dementia.” – Doctor
My big belly
is jolly, Santa-like.
“You’d be sooo hot if you had abs.” – Old Girlfriend
My big belly
is warm snow.
“You don’t fit, you don’t belong.” – Airplane Seatbelt
My big belly
is and is nothing else.
"Bishop’s collection is the first collection of poetry I’ve seen that makes art out of pervasive twenty-first century experiences... Though much of the narrative is in the first-person singular; it often represents a current plurality... The poet questions not only how we denizens of the twenty-first century society got to where we are, but where we are exactly? In a way, the collection calls to mind Rimbaud’s famous proclamation of the ‘self’ as obsolete—and the ‘I’ being without boundaries… In The Digital Self: Poems and Illustrations, readers will find not only a new poet, but a new take on our human condition.”
-Edwina Pendarvis
