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Visual Poetry Series, Pleiades Press
How to Tell If You Are Human: Diagram Poems
With an entirely new approach to poetry and the art of collage, Jessy Randall transforms diagrams, schematics, charts, graphs, and other visual documents from very old books into poems that speak to the absurdities, anxieties, and joys of life in this modern age.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2018
35 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 16, 2019
Smart and funny and engaging. I loved this collection.
May 18, 2020
Hard not to love and feel challenged by this book
January 4, 2020
How to Tell If You Are Human by Jessy Randall (Warrensburg, Missouri: Pleiades Press, 2018)
Jessy Randall’s collection of what her book cover calls “Diagram Poems,” How to Tell If You Are Human, is not my usual fare. The book features mostly early-twentieth-century diagrams from a variety of arcane sources, and Randall’s text is imposed into and onto these original sources. The result is that dusty, officious and somewhat inscrutable stand-alone images are imbued with warmth and humanity, and in the process, they offer deep and surprising penetration into humanness.
What really surprised me in this collection was its warmth. I felt this most intensely in a poem (or set of poems) accompanying a diagram of a baby nursery. The source image comes from The English Duden: A Pictorial Dictionary with English and German Indexes (London: George G. Harrap, 1960). A “duden” is a German pictorial spelling dictionary (the word was new to me), and the image presented is labeled “Baby Hygiene (Nursing) and Baby’s Equipment.”
In this set of diagrams, the nursery is unbelievably detailed. On the verso page, toddler stands in her crib (to which she is strapped). A uniformed nurse bathes an infant in a collapsible tub. A set of shelves and a table are awash in objects, all of which are labeled in the original duden — “the under-blankets,” “the safety strap,” “the rubber panties,” “the enema, a rubber syringe,” and so on. Recto, another uniformed nurse changes a baby’s “napkin,” again with an entire surface of accoutrements (“the teething ring,” “the rubber animal,” “the tin of ointment (tin of vaseline),” but here is another figure, “the mother (or a wet nurse) feeding (nursing, wet-nursing) the baby (the nursing mother).”
This mom or wet-nurse is unusually well equipped, and the 52 labeled items in the two diagrams range from the necessary to the ridiculous (“the elf picture,” one of Randall’s labels, not in the original). I remember how poorly equipped I felt when I brought each of my two children home from the hospital, and the source images recaptured this feeling for me (when, exactly, should I use an enema, and do I need a safety strap for my crib? [Reader: No, you don’t]). But interspersed with the original text are Randall’s additions: the poem, I suppose, although it all works together, with the original labels serving as a parenthetical heaping of too-muchness. Here is a snippet, with original duden labels and Randall’s additions intermingled (these are numbered on the page, but I’m not sure how to capture that here, since the numbers don’t always line up with the text):
1-52 the nursery,
as if knowing the names for things
will make it all right
the rubber sheet (rubber square)
the medicine
the dreariness
the boredom
the under-blankets;
the nurse (children’s trained nurse, nanny):
more medicine
the terror
the safety strap (safety belt)
the pillow
the elf picture …
You start to see what I’m getting at—the poet, with her fears and sense of overwhelm, poking through the rigid correctness of the source.
It’s hard to tell where Randall’s poems begin and end. This set of nursery images from the dictionary functions clearly as one poem, without a title (except that offered in the dictionary for the set of pages), but the next pages are also from the duden (“The Children’s Playground,” the images are labeled). Are these the same poem, or related ones? They aren’t titled, and the table of contents lists only the source of the images. The two sets of pages feel different—the nursery poem is from the mother’s perspective, I think, while the playground poem feels like it’s from a child’s view.
Uncertainty is sometimes a hindrance to enjoying a book of poetry. It should be clear where a poem begins and ends, right? But in Randall’s hands, the use of uncertainty is a rhetorical tool, and an effective one. The impression I get is of someone who is desperate for answers and locked in an outdated library, grabbing book after book to see what truth reveals itself. In other words, the book enacts my exact feeling about the world most days. It’s inscrutable, and it comes without a clear answer manual, despite what religious fundamentalists will tell you.
I’ve offered a close view of just one poem to give an idea of this phenomenal collection, but it may be interesting to know some of Randall’s other source images: a dictionary of classical ballet, a book of indoor games and amusements, something called The Root Habits of Desert Plants (literal? pun? who knows), a Korean-language museum map, a planning guide for research libraries, and more.
When you find yourself suddenly plopped down in a strange country where you’re not sure you understand the locals, you have a few options: You can do your best to leave it, you can give in to confusion, or you can try to settle in and make sense of things. Randall’s poems are a strange country for me, but by the end of her collection, and certainly by a second trek through, I started to get my bearings. It was rewarding. I’d like to see more of it.
Jessy Randall’s collection of what her book cover calls “Diagram Poems,” How to Tell If You Are Human, is not my usual fare. The book features mostly early-twentieth-century diagrams from a variety of arcane sources, and Randall’s text is imposed into and onto these original sources. The result is that dusty, officious and somewhat inscrutable stand-alone images are imbued with warmth and humanity, and in the process, they offer deep and surprising penetration into humanness.
What really surprised me in this collection was its warmth. I felt this most intensely in a poem (or set of poems) accompanying a diagram of a baby nursery. The source image comes from The English Duden: A Pictorial Dictionary with English and German Indexes (London: George G. Harrap, 1960). A “duden” is a German pictorial spelling dictionary (the word was new to me), and the image presented is labeled “Baby Hygiene (Nursing) and Baby’s Equipment.”
In this set of diagrams, the nursery is unbelievably detailed. On the verso page, toddler stands in her crib (to which she is strapped). A uniformed nurse bathes an infant in a collapsible tub. A set of shelves and a table are awash in objects, all of which are labeled in the original duden — “the under-blankets,” “the safety strap,” “the rubber panties,” “the enema, a rubber syringe,” and so on. Recto, another uniformed nurse changes a baby’s “napkin,” again with an entire surface of accoutrements (“the teething ring,” “the rubber animal,” “the tin of ointment (tin of vaseline),” but here is another figure, “the mother (or a wet nurse) feeding (nursing, wet-nursing) the baby (the nursing mother).”
This mom or wet-nurse is unusually well equipped, and the 52 labeled items in the two diagrams range from the necessary to the ridiculous (“the elf picture,” one of Randall’s labels, not in the original). I remember how poorly equipped I felt when I brought each of my two children home from the hospital, and the source images recaptured this feeling for me (when, exactly, should I use an enema, and do I need a safety strap for my crib? [Reader: No, you don’t]). But interspersed with the original text are Randall’s additions: the poem, I suppose, although it all works together, with the original labels serving as a parenthetical heaping of too-muchness. Here is a snippet, with original duden labels and Randall’s additions intermingled (these are numbered on the page, but I’m not sure how to capture that here, since the numbers don’t always line up with the text):
1-52 the nursery,
as if knowing the names for things
will make it all right
the rubber sheet (rubber square)
the medicine
the dreariness
the boredom
the under-blankets;
the nurse (children’s trained nurse, nanny):
more medicine
the terror
the safety strap (safety belt)
the pillow
the elf picture …
You start to see what I’m getting at—the poet, with her fears and sense of overwhelm, poking through the rigid correctness of the source.
It’s hard to tell where Randall’s poems begin and end. This set of nursery images from the dictionary functions clearly as one poem, without a title (except that offered in the dictionary for the set of pages), but the next pages are also from the duden (“The Children’s Playground,” the images are labeled). Are these the same poem, or related ones? They aren’t titled, and the table of contents lists only the source of the images. The two sets of pages feel different—the nursery poem is from the mother’s perspective, I think, while the playground poem feels like it’s from a child’s view.
Uncertainty is sometimes a hindrance to enjoying a book of poetry. It should be clear where a poem begins and ends, right? But in Randall’s hands, the use of uncertainty is a rhetorical tool, and an effective one. The impression I get is of someone who is desperate for answers and locked in an outdated library, grabbing book after book to see what truth reveals itself. In other words, the book enacts my exact feeling about the world most days. It’s inscrutable, and it comes without a clear answer manual, despite what religious fundamentalists will tell you.
I’ve offered a close view of just one poem to give an idea of this phenomenal collection, but it may be interesting to know some of Randall’s other source images: a dictionary of classical ballet, a book of indoor games and amusements, something called The Root Habits of Desert Plants (literal? pun? who knows), a Korean-language museum map, a planning guide for research libraries, and more.
When you find yourself suddenly plopped down in a strange country where you’re not sure you understand the locals, you have a few options: You can do your best to leave it, you can give in to confusion, or you can try to settle in and make sense of things. Randall’s poems are a strange country for me, but by the end of her collection, and certainly by a second trek through, I started to get my bearings. It was rewarding. I’d like to see more of it.
July 31, 2023
Jessy Randall writes poems that are fantastically intelligent without ever seeming like she's showing off. Using charts, graphs, and illustrations from old library books as a sort of "found art," she adds brief, observant bits of writing that challenge the reader just enough. I suspect this book is the perfect read for someone who regularly reads books of poetry and, conversely, I think this is a great book for someone who has never read a book of poetry before.
October 28, 2021
Please stop what you’re doing right now, buy a copy of this and read it. Jessy Randall’s How To Tell If You Are Human is an amazing collection of Poetry. I read it for my Special Topics: Graphic Forms class and I’m so mad that I probably would have never learned of it without the class. Randall’s collection is 74 pages of diagram poems, a type I had never heard of before yesterday. She takes pre existing diagrams and writes poems within them and around them. They’re beautiful poems that are at times powerful, at times hilarious, and full of heart on every page. The way she puts her words inside these diagrams is fantastic and can make it a journey trying to find her words compared to the original words. I seriously loved this so much and I’m going to share it with everyone I come across from now on. A massive 10/10 for this collection!! -Tyler.
October 22, 2018
These poems are absolutely stunning. Some of them make you laugh. Some make you pause as you consider every element. Others hit hard, but each is inventive, new, and an adventure. It's easy to get lost in this book over and over again!
December 31, 2021
Out standing.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews