DESCRIPTION

Self-Portraits Ex Machina is a searing collection that dispenses thunder and lightning through its poems. Divine intervention is replaced by human resilience, strength, ingenuity and vulnerability. Through innovative haibuns, contrapuntal poems and other experimental forms, Devi Laskar’s work encompasses everything from burning crosses and Klan rallies to powerful meditations on motherhood, marriage, and food that carry the weight of cultural memory. Her poems document American racism with razor sharp precision while transforming that documentation into art, as in “Restaurant Queue Contrapuntal” where prejudice at a hostess stand becomes a two-voiced fury of resistance. Memory is a dizzying kaleidoscope in Laskar’s work—reassembling and taking apart moments of trauma and triumph. The plaintive cries to “God” that echo throughout her poems become testament to human persistence in the face of institutional failure. This is a necessary book for our times, bearing witness to self-reliance when systems meant to protect and help fall short.

                 
         –SHIKHA MALAVIYA, AUTHOR OF ANANDIBAI JOSHEE: A LIFE IN POEMS

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Devi S. Laskar‘s luminescent Self-Portraits Ex Machina is a feast in the physical and spiritual sense. Laskar allows her readers to embark on a poetic voyage complete with intellectual meditations on English syntax, observations on victuals offered at vacation Bible camps, and honest recollections of the perils of intergenerational recipe translation. Masterfully injecting nuance into every verse, Laskar’s poems transcend bodily experiences and cultural divides, drawing on myriad previously established traditions—whether retelling ancient Greek myths or satirizing whitewashed country music. Self-Portraits also encourages a higher level of engagement from its readers, boasting interactive poems in the style of both Mad Libs and bricolage chaotically coordinating popular newspaper headlines. The result is a singularly immersive literary adventure, one that asks much of its readers, and delivers even more. In the world she weaves, tapestries of cultural critique and personal outlook deliver a collection that demands lingering with one’s own biases while simultaneously facilitating the abolishment of the boundaries that enable them. 
 

                  — EWA CHRUSCIEL, THE AUTHOR OF YOURS, PURPLE GALLINULE AND THREE OTHER BOOKS