Several Rotations

Poetry. Jesse Seldess's third full length collection of poetry, SEVERAL ROTATIONS plots an experience through a constellation of questions: How do we locate and orient ourselves amidst a continuous present of inconspicuously networked devices and ''services''? With tracked interests reinforced to impulses through millisecond auctions for ad impressions and ''sponsored'' content, what are our desires and dreams? With products valued as a function of the strength of the habits they create, where are our values and actions? Written over several years but at the scale of minutes, SEVERAL ROTATIONS is ''full of the missing words'' for the affects of intersecting and overloading dimensions in a technology-paced, data-saturated context. These poems attempt to slow down, interrupt, reweave, and transform that density into an open and livable ''interface.'' Alli Warren writes: ''Jesse Seldess makes beautiful minimalist music of the linguistic atmosphere of contemporary life... where one feels simultaneously disoriented and yet totally grounded. I don't know how he does it. Is this what meditation feels like? It's like watching someone slowly wring a washcloth?this book is that clear, drinkable, life-sustaining water.''