Come Again?
Will be published approx. on 6. October 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
96 pages
978-0-226-85303-1 (ISBN)
Description
In this formally inventive debut collection, a speaker continuously shapeshifts through roles, forms, and characters.
Alyssa N. Moore's Come Again? conjures a series of otherworldly scenarios in which reinvention becomes a form of resistance and a method to escape the snares of a modern existence to which we contribute but cannot control. Throughout these surreal and absurdist poems, an untethered consciousness is continuously reincarnated and dragged through various personae-including the Volunteer, the Eternal Counselor, the Streetcleaner, and the Architect-to find "what exactly to do with a willing body." For example, in "The Volunteer," a visual sequence, the book's shapeshifting narrator is dropped into a formless expanse and expected to perform. As we move through the collection, the speaker's perception morphs rapidly. From wage worker to computer programmer to sexbot to God, they collide over and over with the boundaries of the world. With each shift, the speaker guides us through a series of darkly comic set pieces that are, in turns, cinematic and slapstick as they seek a solid home base from which to "reject the emptiness that's inherited."
Moore's facility with poetic form, use of image and text, and play between irony and sincerity make Come Again? a bold collection that defies the customary and conventional, instead forging new worlds of continual remaking.
Alyssa N. Moore's Come Again? conjures a series of otherworldly scenarios in which reinvention becomes a form of resistance and a method to escape the snares of a modern existence to which we contribute but cannot control. Throughout these surreal and absurdist poems, an untethered consciousness is continuously reincarnated and dragged through various personae-including the Volunteer, the Eternal Counselor, the Streetcleaner, and the Architect-to find "what exactly to do with a willing body." For example, in "The Volunteer," a visual sequence, the book's shapeshifting narrator is dropped into a formless expanse and expected to perform. As we move through the collection, the speaker's perception morphs rapidly. From wage worker to computer programmer to sexbot to God, they collide over and over with the boundaries of the world. With each shift, the speaker guides us through a series of darkly comic set pieces that are, in turns, cinematic and slapstick as they seek a solid home base from which to "reject the emptiness that's inherited."
Moore's facility with poetic form, use of image and text, and play between irony and sincerity make Come Again? a bold collection that defies the customary and conventional, instead forging new worlds of continual remaking.
Reviews / Votes
"Poetry fundamentally changed in 2019, when Moore published two poems. Come Again? continues Moore's innovations. I love the imaginary interviews that bring to mind E. E. Cummings and Plato. I love the humor of one speaker, who, as god for a week, 'watched a lot of porn.' I love the devastation of 'Is there / a problem? I just want / to keep feelings out of it.' Moore is a talent who only comes around once in a generation, and Come Again? is a phenomenal debut." -- The Cyborg Jillian Weise, author of "Cyborg Detective" "This is an avant-garde into which you'll want to enlist. This is an avant-garde of humanism and hopefulness that sets aside the cudgel. This is the avant-garde we do not deserve, as a nation and a people, but Moore has been kind enough to give it to us anyway." -- Josh Bell, author of "The Gods in Small Doses" "Moore's debut, Come Again?, refuses to offer a single poetics or a single voice-to found, in other words, a poetic career organized around legibility, predictability, or marketability. Instead, she offers a mob of possibilities-scribbles and shards of architecture, tendrils and horses, porn and presidents-so much and so strange that, in reading the book, one feels the doorways and balustrades that bind our art in place begin to shudder, fracture, break." -- Toby Altman, author of "Jewel Box" "Come Again? is a wildly inventive exploration of the ways the individual, shaped by and serving preexisting systems, gains consciousness of their impulses and desires and becomes more questioning of the roles that define them. At once a sci-fi flick and a true account of modern existence, Come Again? is about the dream of reinvention, of escaping the trap of systems we contribute to but can't control. Moore suspends us in a field of possibility, where 'Each new lesson is exquisite / foreplay' but also a 'fracturing.'" -- Rosa Alcala, Phoenix Poets consulting editor and author of "YOU"More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Illustrations
2 line drawings
Dimensions
Height: 241 mm
Width: 165 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-85303-1 (9780226853031)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Alyssa N. Moore is the author of the chapbook WET MEDIA. She is an intermedia poet and an editor for Ghost Proposal, a journal for poetry and work outside traditional notions of genre. She was the inaugural winner of Poetry magazine's Editors Prize for Visual Poetry.
Content
The Volunteer
My Week as Eternal Counselor
The Streetcleaner
the streetcleaner can love their job for a while
Thirst Ex Machina
The Light
the streetcleaner adjusts their position
impulse controls
because i couldnt remember what happened to me
the streetcleaner takes stock
the streetcleaner considers a long-lost love
Because I couldn't have what I needed
The Architect
The Beginning of Character
The Architect
Translocation
Acknowledgments
My Week as Eternal Counselor
The Streetcleaner
the streetcleaner can love their job for a while
Thirst Ex Machina
The Light
the streetcleaner adjusts their position
impulse controls
because i couldnt remember what happened to me
the streetcleaner takes stock
the streetcleaner considers a long-lost love
Because I couldn't have what I needed
The Architect
The Beginning of Character
The Architect
Translocation
Acknowledgments