Klappentext
The Algorithm of I is Jack Crocker'snsecond collection of poems.nIn The Algorithm of I, Jack Crocker holdsnup a mirror to the human conditionnwhose reflections, while intensely personal,nare timeless in their search for annessential self. Thinking of the three greatnand simple images in whose presence thenartist's heart first opened-"the gospelnwomb of Delta dirt," his "father's walls,"nor "Linda Boykin's lips"-the speakerntracks himself in the multiple selvesnorbiting the center.nThe chronology suggests a constant statenof becoming. From the "ancestral prison"nof birth to being "Programmed betweennthe contradiction of predestination andnthe hubris of free," imagination becomesnthe way to reconcile life's painful disequilibriumnbetween the aspirations ofnhope and inevitable concessions to despair.nWhile every leaf may be "a tonguenof grief," "spring revives the beauty ofndeath."nBut like "spiraled genes a Monet hasnlaced," it is less sadness that draws us tonthese poems than the osmosis of intelligencenand heart that shines through sonbrilliantly. Like his hero Sisyphus, "stepnby completed step," the poet's revenge isnstronger than his rock, giving and vitalizing.nCompelled to make art out of "thenseeing of doubt" he arrives at cautiousnhope as "The battered atoms of the heartngo on arranging themselves/in the possibilitynof human love and revolt," seekingntruth "in the light of pretend."
