{"product_id":"9781646052776","title":"Because You Previously Liked or Played","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe poems in \u003ci\u003eBecause You Previously Liked or Played\u003c\/i\u003e explore a world that is increasingly mediated through technology; the personal and political struggle for meaning, connection, and reality run like a fever dream through the schizophrenic circuits of television, cyberspace, and virtual existence.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe poems in \u003ci\u003eBecause You Previously Liked or Played\u003c\/i\u003e reveal an extremely online persona who finds life IRL challenging. In the reality of these poems, the reader confronts the difficulties and nuances of a world rendered more accessible, more instantaneous, but also more isolating, uncertain, even terrifying thanks to the internet. The speaker faces a social sphere that is bigger, faster, more politically unstable.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eLyricism and personal expression are interlaced with the language and syntax of chat rooms, gamers, e-commerce, in a way that troubles the dividing lines between the human and the inhuman, the authentic and the artificial, the real and the hyperreal. The self morphs into a sequence of failed firewalls and emotions. And yet, the speaker continues questing for answers, for meaning, for connection.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThese poems provide an unflinching look at a wired existence, but they never lose their capacity for wonder, feeling, surprise.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Jim Redmond","offers":[{"title":"Deep Vellum |  Paperback \/ softback | Trade paperback (US) |  2023-11-10","offer_id":44230051692799,"sku":"9781646052776","price":26.95,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0329\/9075\/7001\/files\/BNCImageAPI_ee555ff2-0519-4d58-bf8d-ed4f18f81160.jpg?v=1692993832","url":"https:\/\/riverbookshop.com\/products\/9781646052776","provider":"River Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}