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Love, Robot
Poetry. Technology. Media Studies. A collection of love poetry that undercuts and reassembles narratives, LOVE, ROBOT is an experimental text that humanizes our relationship with technology. Through liaisons between humans and machines in a science fictional world, the collection offers a tense, playful, yet complex portrait of love, reflective of our contemporary moment. Rhee draws from a wide array of forms from poetics and robotics such as algorithms, narrative poetry, chat scripts, and failed sonnets to create a world of transgressive love. This vision of an artificially intelligent future reveals and questions the contours of the human, and how robots and humans fall in and out of love.
"Poetry is rightly destroyed and rebuilt in the abrasive caress of we whose claims upon the human, having constantly been denied by man, put the human to the test. It's still held by many to be a scientific fact that the humanities are not for us. At the same time, surrounding that dimensionless enclosure, whose inside and outside we refuse, we are the humanities, that fleshly mechanics, and LOVE, ROBOT is a missive from that ongoing refusal. 'I know it hurts. But/code fails' so beautifully in Margaret Rhee's hand and ear. 'The world was not made for love,' she says. So let's follow her on out of it. —Fred Moten
"The poems of LOVE, ROBOT are delicate and smooth, witty and touching, and yes, occasionally odd and strange, as human beings themselves are. In a paradoxical and wonderful way, Margaret Rhee's robot love affairs make us rethink what it might mean to be human." —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer
"Margaret Rhee's LOVE, ROBOT is a gorgeous, brainy collection of poems about erotic connections between humans and machines and the impossibility of disentangling the one from the other. Love machines thrum through these poems, all lit up with desire and electric light, showing 'how to make a circuit.' LOVE, ROBOT resonates with works of great science fiction such as Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ted Chiang's The Lifecycle of Software Objects, and Marge Piercy's He, She, and It, but offers something different, rare, and beautiful in its piercing lyricism and keen, surprising pleasures." —Shelley Streeby author of Radical Sensations and the Director of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop
"....As Rhee 'I loved you but/you could not make us beautiful./ I loved you because you could make beautiful things/that I never got to keep.' This way of calling out to a beloved, with whom a reciprocal feeling or encounter is never certain, reminded me — not in its form, but in its feeling — of the Mira Bai's bhajans. Has Margaret Rhee written the world's first cyberbhajan? '[S]ay, robot,' the book 'murmur to me, it is the middle of the night./....we all deserve a song that is untranslatable'. How beautiful, how I found this sentiment, this voltage, this unspeakable to be." —Bhanu Kapil
"Poetry is rightly destroyed and rebuilt in the abrasive caress of we whose claims upon the human, having constantly been denied by man, put the human to the test. It's still held by many to be a scientific fact that the humanities are not for us. At the same time, surrounding that dimensionless enclosure, whose inside and outside we refuse, we are the humanities, that fleshly mechanics, and LOVE, ROBOT is a missive from that ongoing refusal. 'I know it hurts. But/code fails' so beautifully in Margaret Rhee's hand and ear. 'The world was not made for love,' she says. So let's follow her on out of it. —Fred Moten
"The poems of LOVE, ROBOT are delicate and smooth, witty and touching, and yes, occasionally odd and strange, as human beings themselves are. In a paradoxical and wonderful way, Margaret Rhee's robot love affairs make us rethink what it might mean to be human." —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer
"Margaret Rhee's LOVE, ROBOT is a gorgeous, brainy collection of poems about erotic connections between humans and machines and the impossibility of disentangling the one from the other. Love machines thrum through these poems, all lit up with desire and electric light, showing 'how to make a circuit.' LOVE, ROBOT resonates with works of great science fiction such as Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ted Chiang's The Lifecycle of Software Objects, and Marge Piercy's He, She, and It, but offers something different, rare, and beautiful in its piercing lyricism and keen, surprising pleasures." —Shelley Streeby author of Radical Sensations and the Director of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop
"....As Rhee 'I loved you but/you could not make us beautiful./ I loved you because you could make beautiful things/that I never got to keep.' This way of calling out to a beloved, with whom a reciprocal feeling or encounter is never certain, reminded me — not in its form, but in its feeling — of the Mira Bai's bhajans. Has Margaret Rhee written the world's first cyberbhajan? '[S]ay, robot,' the book 'murmur to me, it is the middle of the night./....we all deserve a song that is untranslatable'. How beautiful, how I found this sentiment, this voltage, this unspeakable to be." —Bhanu Kapil
- GenresPoetryScience Fiction
94 pages, Paperback
First published November 7, 2017
2 people are currently reading
173 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
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January 10, 2020Read earlier this week. I wasn't always sure what to do with the code poems, but all in all it was a really lovely collection. The robot itself is an intriguing figure: what does it mean to be a robot? Or to love one? I particularly liked "Make, Robot" which opens "I loved you because you could make beautiful things: / magical world of red bathtub boats / peacock feather trees hung from the ceiling", "Lemonade" with lines like "Remember / I placed you in rice, and reset you? I let you rise again. / And now you want me bck? It makes no algorith- / mic sense.", and the "Machine Testimonials" section of mostly prose poems, almost like reviews, full of tenderness, like in "Machine Testimonial 4"
isn't this what being human is all about? that's what i desired to learn from you. but you opened my circuit board and crossed my red and black wires all night. lie to me all you want, as you look into my eyes. i have eyes too, you know. even if sensors rust. i'll pretend like good code should.
A set of love poems, a set of poems about what it might mean to be a robot, a set of poems about what it means to be in a social position where people treat you like a robot--not fully allegorical, but also yes, constantly pushing outward, making you ask who the robot and the robot's lover(s) might stand in for.
January 25, 2022
I kind of loved these poems and I also didn't really understand them but I felt like they were tucking me into bed. Like someone was touching my shoulder, but actually that person was a crush and that was crush was a robot. I also felt like every poem was the beginning of the movie "HER," when the main character is falling in love with the robot, and what does that mean to fall in love with a robot? Or maybe what it does mean to be a human? These poems are sweet. Like pushing a button and the button is actually a robot who tells you the truth, which is that the robot is in love with you. Anyways. I read this collection before bed which feels like the right thing to do.
July 23, 2021
I'm going to have to reread this a few times, let it sink in before I can write a coherent review. This is very, very good.
September 8, 2018
A delightful, whimsical collection of poetry about loving robots.
June 2, 2019
A great collection. I appreciate how these poems play with coding languages, sci-fi robot tropes, and tell a story of a kind of star-crossed love between humans and "machines" (whatever or whoever those machines might be). (Also give me ALL THE SONNETS.)
May 28, 2018
amazing amazing amazing
September 20, 2018
Exquisite.
November 10, 2018
Intimate embrace with machine brings out the humanity in us. A must read if you want to imagine what is possible...
August 9, 2022
I didn’t really get it tbh
November 13, 2023
someone i love gave me this book of poetry, because he loves my poetry. therefore this book could be nothing but it’s everything to me regardless :) ps: it was also really good !!
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December 9, 2024read for 21c poetry clas
May 15, 2025
Some of the poems I really loved, some I didn't care for. I could see it rising to a 4 in a reread.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews