Soft Science

by Franny Choi

Loosely inspired by the movie Ex Machina and the character Kyoko (an Asian sex robot whose creator removes her language capabilities in order to protect his company's trade secrets). It's a take on language, race, and gender; about survival under capitalism; about power and intimacy, especially with others whose bodies make them strange.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Science Fiction, Feminism, Adult, Fiction

90 pages, ebook

First published April 2, 2019

About the author

Franny Choi is a poet, performer, editor, and playwright. She is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone and the chapbook Death by Sex Machine. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, the New England Review, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman Fellow, Senior News Editor for Hyphen, co-host of the Poetry Foundation's podcast VS, and member of the Dark Noise Collective. Her second collection, Soft Science, was released from Alice James Books in April 2018. A current Zell Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Michigan, she is currently based near Detroit, Michigan.

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intelligent, always interesting poems. I particularly like when the poems look at the intersections between the human body and technology. A really strong collection from one of my favorite poets.

[may ➹]

my forever issue with poetry is I will never know if something is well-written and I’m just too dumb to understand it, or if it is genuinely just bad…

short rtc

[jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

“i have come & come here a thousand times,
gone by many names. trust: i am no god,

only woodworm, only termite burrowing
like a light in the flesh. i am no insect,

only an ache on loop in the window.”

every now and then, i like losing myself in poetry. and soft science is the epitome of losing yourself; breaking apart in fragmented, choppy poems exploring what it truly means to be alive.

this collection of poetry definitely carries a sci-fi theme, showcasing a cyborg trying to pass a series of turing tests all with their own theme. at times, the identity of the cyborg seems to overlap with that of the reader or even choi herself; this sense of fragmentation is fascinating, creating an otherworldliness only enhanced by the mix of the digital and the organic.

it’s a complex interplay of agency and identity. we see the cyborg live in a violent world and attempt to navigate it, pretending to be as human as she possibly can, but what is human? how can we retain our softness, our vulnerability, in a world that keeps demanding we give that -- give ourselves -- up?

there are a lot of deconstructions and themes at play here. gender gets a good look-over, exploring the performative aspect of femininity and objectification in ways that felt both accurate and heartrending, such as this one: “so i am both the woman holding the camera and the woman / being opened by it”.

the cyborg struggles finding words for what she experiences, trying to craft her identity and find her own way; constantly needing to prove her humanity by passing that turing test. on that account, we can also draw parallels with being an immigrant in a different country, or a queer person proving their right to exist.

choi articulates that beautifully herself in an interview with NPR: “as someone who is a child of immigrants, as a queer person of color, we're always trying to pass the turing test, always trying to use language in order to convince others that we should be treated as human.”

so there’s plenty of stuff to be gained from reading this; both overtly and hidden between the lines.

choi also experiments a great deal with structure, layout, and formatting. this is not the book to read if you’re looking for the more conventional type of poetry; rules of grammar and sentence structure are thrown out the window.

i’ll admit that it does make some poems harder to read or interpret; i had to go back a couple of times and reread some of them. the alienness of it all works really well for it thematically, but it can also literally alienate you as a reader from what it’s trying to say.

but on the other hand, you get delightful little surprises such as the glossary of terms at the very start of the book also functioning as a ‘hidden’ poem. it’s not just merely a table explaining to you what certain words in the book represent, just like our cyborg is not just a machine.

anyway, the experience of reading this for me was very… raw. i was especially struck by how surreal and alien it all felt, and yet comforted at the same time that choi was able to articulate the strangeness of being a confused soul in a violent world inhabiting this weird thing called a body.



if that sounds too vague and weird for you, then that might already be an indication that this collection of poems might not be your cup of tea. but if you are intrigued by the cover (which represents this collection’s contents very well) and enjoy the themes, then this could be a great addition to your shelves.

“inside the beast is an apple
holding a knife to its throat
threatening to rot.”

✎ 3.5 stars.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was drawn to this poetry collection because of the concept: queer, Asian American femininity wrapped in the symbolism of the body as a machine. SOFT SCIENCE by Franny Choi blends science fiction and poetry, paying particular focus on the language of the earth with the language of the future.

A part of me just didn’t feel smart enough for this collection and a majority of the poems went a little over my head. But the ones I did understand were fantastic. There’s a deep isolation, a sense of withdrawal, and a rotting violence that’s explored here. It snarls and claws and grips hard, demanding your attention. While I don’t think the collection inspired intense emotion, it did make me think deeper about consciousness and alienation.

Choi’s collection questions what humanity we have left and examines our desire for connection. It’s existential and sinister and even bitter but it’s also lyrical and elegant and fearless.

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The emergence of language, it’s generally assumed, history, art, symbolism, &so on, among many homonids, or that selfsame hardwired solace, say, as other
creatures.'

Wow. Just wow. This was so, so good. What a brilliant conceit to use cyborgs, AI, and the infamous Turing Test to explore the binary dichotomies of gender, love, lived experience and sexuality/sensuality. Such rapturous writing, parsing and fragmenting language as if it were a hard-wired code to meaning.

[Acqua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Soft Science felt like trying to grasp onto something as it disintegrates in your hands and falls through your fingers, which I guess is what the author was going for.

I didn't get a lot of this. It's probably not the right collection to start with if you - like me - aren't used to reading poetry at all, but it was still a really interesting experience. Taken literally, there's often not a lot to get, because everything in this collection is an exercise in breaking apart, shattering and mixing words, playing with format and the many ways English can be broken and still carry so much meaning if only you look at it sideways.

A lot of this is also talking about perspective and its consequence, othering. No wonder a lot of its imagery relies on cyborgs and AIs. It's about living as a woman in our world, in which being hammered into a shape made to please others is just a day like another and sex is a no-win situation; it's about living as a queer Asian-American woman in America, in which racism and xenophobia are everyday occurrences and the internet highlights the worst of it.

It made me think about language barriers, and how there was yet another, unexpected one because of my first language, and try as I might holding onto English will always be more difficult to me.
So, no, I didn't understand a lot of this. It might have been the point. I might be missing the point entirely. That still doesn't mean this has no value, even when so much of our ways to measure worth and consciousness rely on something as self-centered as understanding and "relatability". It made me think about many things in a more indirect way, so I guess it worked.

[Arie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for a gimmicky poem well done, and so I kinda of adored Glossary of Terms ("STAR/Meaning/bright, ancient wound I follow home"). You're So Paranoid, which reads strongly and feels even more so timely right now, the bitter-cold liveliness of Solitude, and all the moons of Perihelion: A History Of Touch are other favourites.

I found the cyborg poems a little harder to get into, though I did appreciate the theme - A Brief History of Cyborgs is excellent, though, and again appreciated the gimmicky poem very very well done in The Cyborg Wants to Make Sure She Heard You Right (where the poet has taken hateful tweets sent to her and run them through multiple iterations of Google translate until they come out into an oddly unfragmented poem.)
I'm not usually one for so many tech references but the collection pulled me in anyway - one to read slowly, in parts, not to devour whole in one sitting.

[Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating collection. I loved seeing James Jean's artwork on the cover, and I had read wonderful things about her poetry so I felt compelled to check this out and was so glad I did. Blessedly original and imagistic, many of these will stay with me.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I struggled with this collection of poetry. I really like some of Choi's poetry -- her poem "To the Man Who Shouted 'I Like Pork Fried Rice' at Me on the Street" is one of my favorites. But Soft Science fell short for me. Weaving in technology, sexuality, gender, and even more technology - robots, cyborgs, etc. - this collection pushed things a little to far for me. I like to be challenged when reading poems, but I also like to connect with them. Unfortunately, the tech part of the poems didn't allow me to connect with them which meant the book fell flat for me.

[Ellie]

- 'be honest. the wounds have been bearable / thus far. & who isn't bruised around the edges' (& O Bright Star of Disaster, I Have Been Lit)

- 'and my friends who are afraid to leave their bathrooms my friends who I love and I love [...] My friends. Who slice plums illegally on soccer fields.' (You're So Paranoid)

- '//if you don't like it here why don't you go somewhere else' (Turing Test_Problem Solving)

- 'the kings were boys again' (The Morning I Scroll My Way Back Into America)

- 'But for that one first night, everything cold-flecked and whispering was ours, the pink light ours, sent from another world so we could, for a night, feel untouched. So we could feel like sugar - crumbling, and perfect for it.' (Snow Moon - Perihelion: A History of Touch)

- 'All the trees wanted my number. Sent fuzzy messengers to murmur in my ears: I get so afraid sometimes all I want all I want is. All spring I brushed confessions out of my hair. Tore the little letters apart and locked myself in the refrigerator, until the world promised to stop birthing such soft things.' (Flower Moon - Perihelion: A History of Touch)

- 'And so, as the light died, we put ours mouths on the least lovable, the too-full, the easy-bruised, we shouted I choose you, and you, and you, and you, and canned that hunger, and spooned it into our mouths on the coldest days.' (Strawberry Moon - Perihelion: A History of Touch)

**

Framed around the concept of cyborgs and the Other and what constitutes being human, with a few poems linking directly into how often immigrants and BIPOC are often considered 'less than'. There are some lovely lines and themes in here if you turn your mind to decoding them.

Read for F/F February '21 - #FFFeb2021

[E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

i feel i didn't 'get it' but i enjoyed the play with the structure and the rhythm

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

Being a little generous with my rating here, because although this collection didn't do much for me as a whole, there are quite a few admirable poems that made the reading experience worthwhile.

I was very intrigued by this book in concept (the intersection between humanity and technology and queer identity, as seen through a cyborg) but the execution fell very flat. I think it's easy to fall back on the old "I just didn't get it" phrase when it comes to reviewing poetry, but isn't some of that failure on the poet? This may sound harsh, but I think Choi lost focus in a lot of these poems, throwing whatever she could at the wall to see what sticks. There's an abundance of visual and sensory detail, but not a lot of clarity of meaning. The poems are most successful when Choi takes a straightforward approach and avoids the conceptual ("On the Night of the Election," "Afterlife," etc.). On the other hand, I did enjoy the sequence of moon poems, though I found the frequent shift in subject/speaker jarring.

I'm not against experimenting with form by any means, I just think it's been done better by other poets (Fatimah Asghar's collection If They Come for Us comes to mind). I will be interested to read more from Choi in the future.

If the topic of technology is of interest, I recommend checking out Sally Wen Mao's collection Oculus: Poems. Very similar themes, less frustrating to read.

[Alan]

Soft Science is a sufficiently diverse set of poems - varied in structure and style. One is in the form of a table, so that you have to refer to the headings for the rows and columns in order to tune in. There are a series of poems that are variations of the title Turing Test, written before the current boom in AI technology. Then you have your singular and serial prose poems, all of which seem to circle around Choi’s identity, making successive approximations at femininity, the experience of being a minor in America, and dealing with the emotions surrounding Trump’s presidency.

I suppose the most damning thing I could say about the collection is that the poems are quite interesting. Heady, cerebral. I’m not sure if those are ever the best adjectives to describe poetry, but that opinion is informed by my own philosophy on poems, which I believe need to be pieces that cut through our cognitions and logic, activating the affects. Either way, it is very clear that Choi is talented. I will be reading her latest collection shortly.

[el · Rating 5 out of 5]

every day franny choi takes cuntybiotics against servophobia

[Alex Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew this book was going to be weird, but I wasn't expecting it to be inscrutable-weird like it was for some of the poems. Sometimes Choi knocked it out of the park, like writing the poem in code that I always wanted to write with "Program for the Morning After" and turning the question "Where are you from?" on its head in "Turning Test_Weight," but sometimes I just had no idea what was going on other than machines and human body parts. I guess I'm saying that a good amount of these poems missed the mark for me, but the ones that didn't were hella good. Recommended if you have an interest in strange intersections of tech and literature and if you are willing to wrestle a good amount with language.

[chloe · Rating 2 out of 5]

the poetry mainly focused on artificial intelligence, cyborgs, sex, technology, etc. which i feel like a more intelligent version of me (in an alternate universe maybe?) would have liked. unfortunately, many of the poems were way too complex to understand, so i couldn't fully enjoy them :( i see a lot of people saying they prefer choi's other work to this though, so maybe i'll check it out sometime!!

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

science earth magic love !

[janeee :D · Rating 4 out of 5]

hi im alive also this is good as fuck

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 Stars
I'm not usually a poetry reader, but I really enjoyed these. Queer AI poetry is definitely my thing. With any collection, I enjoyed some poems more than others.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was written for the girlies like me who believe they were made in a lab <3

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book of poems - I read it in one sitting, even staying up later than I had planned to finish it - but I do feel like a lot of it went over my head. What I did understand really resonated with me and I liked it, though I will admit that I just don't feel like I necessarily *got* all of it. Sometimes I felt like all I got from reading the poems was the feeling of it, the emotions that it provoked in me. Sometimes I just liked the format on the page, the way the words looked or even sounded when I read them. Sometimes I just liked the idea of it, the gist of the collection. The sense of isolation and loneliness, the desperation for attention - even in ways that destroy us - really did stir up emotions in me. I'm sure the robotics and AI metaphors helped drive this home for me as well, as I've always been overly attached to both - (when I was a child, I became extremely attached to our knock-off brand roomba and would follow it around the house to help it avoid bumping into corners, lead it to trails of dust in an attempt to 'befriend' it).

Overall, I feel like this is a beautiful and emotional collection, even if you're in the same boat as me and many of these works go right over your head. At the very least, it's very interesting and I really love what the author did with this collection.

[Eileen]

i expected to love this, but it just didn't quite connect for me as a collection :// i thought the thematic threads were a little messy, and that references to the cyber / cyborg were thrown around in so many different ways that they felt like empty ciphers, but also maybe i am just dumb and did not apply enough mental energy. big rat brain u know. there are some gems though – "you're so paranoid" and "perihelion: a history of touch" ... yum.

[Andrea Blythe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous book-length collection of poetry that explores queer, Asian American femininity through the lens of robots, cyborgs, and artificial intelligence.

I have an podcast interview with Choi coming soon.

[lobelyys · Rating 2 out of 5]

i’m mad. i really wanted to like this, but it was just weird and confusionary

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked quite a few of these poems--some great lines that I wrote down, especially in the second part of the book. Other poems I thought were mediocre which comes in collections of all kinds, but I generally found this to be lovely in it's queerness and speculative nature.

[Hannah Showalter · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars i think! the way language was used here was so so good. i've never read poems like this before and they gave me a lot of inspiration! i fell in love with this collection, so so cool and beautiful!

[Derodidymus · Rating 3 out of 5]

o lectură interesantă, deși trebuie să fiu sinceră- multe poezii nu au avut sens efectiv. da, pornește de la o premisă interesantă- un cyborg care ajunge printre oameni, adoptând din comportamentul/limbajul/you name it lor+ îi analizează. e destul de confuz și la un moment dat ajunge să devină și obositor. mi se pare un subiect și așa greu de abordat, darămite să îl înghesui în 90 de pagini de versuri.
totuși 3 stele pentru că are unele poezii care mi-au plăcut mult :)

I hated my body for loving what could only die.
I hated it for forgetting. I hated it. For being my ugly, only chance.

AFTERLIFE

To answer your question, yes,
I find myself wanting less and less
to fuck the dead boy who was mine
before he was nothing.
He is nine years younger than me now—a boy
who still smokes blunts in his dorm room,
by which I mean he does none of that
because he is dead. Because his body
is no body now, but wet earth.
Meaning I should instead desire
the bellies of flies. Moth wings
unfolding wet from their shells.
Should hunger for the fish that ate
the fish that ate the plankton
that took his once-body dust
into its gullet. The boy whose body
was the first to enter mine is breathing
from too many mouths now.
He is gilled, wet leaves, coral,
all things that live but don’t know it,
don’t know they were once a boy
who peeled off my wet jeans,
kissed the insides of my knees
in his parents’ house, who came to me
love-addled one night, saying,

listen no matter listen
always i’ll never

(nu poezia mea preferată but oh well)

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 🌟

Some of the poems were really good!

One of my favorite lines!

“Her mouth is a stage sprouting cardboard trees.
What’s my motivation? She asks the man reading in her bed.
She runs headless through the mall and everyone shouts, Hey legs!
No one mentions the girls gnawing each ankle to its core.”

[Paula Aparicio · Rating 4 out of 5]

ojalá alguien alguna vez traiga estos libros a españa!!!!
una traducción me parecería: impresionante

me fascina todo eso de la poesía cyborg el lenguaje los mundos paralelos…

[So long, Sana · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5⭐️ ❝𝐎𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐚 𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐞𝐝: 𝐂𝐚𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤? 𝐇𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞, 𝐭𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐠𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐠𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧.❞

I guess I couldn’t bond with it the way I thought I would.