What do you think?
Rate this book
Cyborgia
Poetry. Science Fiction. Melding the language of sci-fi and sensuality, CYBORGIA, Susan Slaviero's redolent, ambitious debut, wallows delightfully in its rhythm and vocabulary, yet remains sharp and meticulous. A lyric guide to cyborg feminism--complete with robosexuality and teledildonics--Slaviero traverses traditional female tropes, including fairy-tale heroines, mermaids, and brides. Full of lucent wit, imagination, intelligence and a scathing playfulness.
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2010
36 people want to read
About the author
Susan Slaviero
10 books14 followersSusan Slaviero has a BA in Creative and Professional Writing from Lewis University. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Apocrypha (Dancing Girl Press, 2009) and An Introduction to the Archetypes (Shadowbox Press, 2008). Her first full-length collection of poetry, Cyborgia, is forthcoming from Mayapple Press in 2010. Her work has appeared in journals RHINO, Flyway, Fourteen Hills, Arsenic Lobster, Blood Orange Review, Caffeine Destiny, Eclectica, The Pedestal Magazine and many others. She designs and edits the online literary journal blossombones.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 13, 2014
Someone should nominate selections from this highly literary sci fi collection to Ellen Datlow's anthology of the Year's Best Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Among my favorites:
"Consider the Dangers of Reconstructing Your Wife As a Cyborg":
"In the twenty-six minutes since I've been resurrected I have devised about ten different ways to disassemble you. Imagine what I could do with an hour and a box of power tools." (37)
"Bluebeard's Clockwork Bride":
"Perhaps a harp
in her chest, he says,
or a music box between her winding
hips? She should be better equipped
for staircases.
She should taste like honey." (42)
"Without Hands":
"When she spits on her stumps
fleshy buds emerge from cauterized bone, the fingers
fresh shoots, pale and tender. Her palms like bread
rising. With these hands, she can charm snakes.
With these hands, she can unbury the dead." (46)
January 2, 2019
Micro-blurb: a dazzling occult feedback loop of post-human synonyms & erotic threat.
March 13, 2016
4-4.5
some amazing enjambment and soundscapes. but also some poems that don't fully hit their stride, pull up short or circle around a static scene. suuuuper enjoyable and very smart.
some amazing enjambment and soundscapes. but also some poems that don't fully hit their stride, pull up short or circle around a static scene. suuuuper enjoyable and very smart.
March 3, 2012
Cyborgia (Mayapple Press, 2010, 71 pp., $14.95) is Susan Slaviero’s debut full-length poetry collection. She presents a highly imaginative series of prophetic visions mapping futuristic life without human women and, more immediately, of women presently living in a hyper-masculine world. Her poems can be funny and playful. Slaviero references robotics and passages replicating computer language. However, recurring themes of alarm, repulsion and horror fill this wonderful, terrifying volume.
Slaviero consistently highlights perils facing modern women: forced reproduction, sexual violence, subjugation to brutal husbands, and subjection to hideous medical experiments. Her female beings are transformed from the human feminine to inanimate objects. But they are cold, impersonal, and completely disposable. This throwaway humanity is stunningly rendered in one of the opening poems, “Phenomena of Probability:”
. . . She plays the
viola while making supper. Someday, she will be a box of fragments
cluttering your attic. Someday, you will decide you prefer mermaids. (pp. 8)
Cyborgia is divided into four sections: The Red Queen Hypothesis, Celluloid Marionettes, Boolean Fairy Tales, and Ontology of the Virtual Body. These sections masterfully depict (de)evolution of women from the prototypical “Postcorporeal” to the slave of “The Fourth Cyborg Epistle: Entropy.” Slaviero leads us through a gallery of post-woman females. Gynoids, dolls, cyborgs and cybernetic mermaids litter laboratories of “amateur scientists and pornographers.” They are assembled, disassembled and programmed every conceivable way.
In The Red Queen Hypothesis, Slaviero delves into the construction of the post-woman feminine identity. She depicts in “The Mechanian:”
. . . He fashions her a solenoid
spine, electromagnetic thumbs, pulleys at her hips
and shoulders. She is milk and smoke, a dash
of candlepower, her wire antennae clacking
like ice cubes in a tumbler of gin. (pp. 9)
In “Now, a list of ingredients for the post-human ((cyborg)) body,” Slaviero provides an alchemical catalog of components for constructing these post-women:
butterfly throat :: diecast bronze :: dexterous clockwork arms
pouring libations of vodka :: an air-driven polymer muscle :: (pp. 18)
Celluloid Marionettes frequently places Slaviero’s beings in an Old West setting, depicting a quasi-frontier in her post-woman world. She describes in “Cyborg Cowgirl:”
My gunslinger arms rolling loose & inhuman.
A woman casting analog codes in the direction
of the old west. A turn-key metaphor
for collage, piecework. (pp. 27)
All the while, human essence is stripped. In”Origin Story:”
. . . We suffer amnesia
of the body, believe anything can emerge
from a stoma. A dragon. Artichoke hearts.
A prophet that looks like a hologram but isn’t. (pp. 31)
Boolean Fairy Tales twists fables of Snow White and Briar Rose, among others, into futuristic nightmares. In “If Snow White Were a Cyborg:”
. . . If she fell in a drug-
induced coma, the dwarves would have her head
cryogenically frozen, never realizing she only needed
the pills dislodged from her throat to awaken. (pp. 44)
Additionally, Slaviero continues (de)evolution in “Gretel Discusses Her Prosthetic Arm:”
I have become more than mere
girl. I am an armory
dressed in gingham and lace.
You would never suspect
that my ulna is a loaded gun,
that the bend in my elbow bears teeth. (pp. 48)
In the concluding Ontology of the Virtual Body, Slaviero uses various religious images to convey the final establishment of her post-woman world. “Our Lady of Machinery” highlights complete subjugation of the feminine:
. . . She is matrilineal code,
a thaumaturgic model. O siren! O martyr! Her face
is a Marian illusion, a flickering virgin in your
garbled prayers. Your fiberglass reflection. (pp. 57)
“Cyborg Fantasies” presents the new feminine ideal. Slaviero asks:
What think-tank of amateur scientists
and pornographers devised the ideal feminine
bone structure in pressurized rooms? (pp. 62)
In her terrifying, superb penultimate “The Fourth Cyborg Epistle: Entropy,” she reveals an entity:
. . . mewling in the sawgrass as my limbs oxidize
among the wild parsnips. I am obliged to accept your brainmail, to
subject my self to your experiments . . . (pp. 70)
For all its futuristic language, Cyborgia really addresses the present state of women seen through the lens of their extinction. Slaviero’s cyborgs are today’s housewives, models, secretaries. The dehumanizing, the stripping away of the feminine is happening now, not in some ethereal post-human universe. Her machines are our wives and mothers and daughters, their human-ness reduced to “fevered hearts swarming in a blue-lit aquarium.” (pp. 34) Thankfully, Slaviero reveals this corrosion, this deterioration in a convincing, inimitable style. Never shrill or panicked, she walks us calmly through her frightening catalog of poetic prophecy, indicating where we erred, warning how we will all shrivel to titanium bones if we continue hurtling like a starship down that black and freezing path.
Originally appeared in Chiron Review # 94, Spring 2011
Slaviero consistently highlights perils facing modern women: forced reproduction, sexual violence, subjugation to brutal husbands, and subjection to hideous medical experiments. Her female beings are transformed from the human feminine to inanimate objects. But they are cold, impersonal, and completely disposable. This throwaway humanity is stunningly rendered in one of the opening poems, “Phenomena of Probability:”
. . . She plays the
viola while making supper. Someday, she will be a box of fragments
cluttering your attic. Someday, you will decide you prefer mermaids. (pp. 8)
Cyborgia is divided into four sections: The Red Queen Hypothesis, Celluloid Marionettes, Boolean Fairy Tales, and Ontology of the Virtual Body. These sections masterfully depict (de)evolution of women from the prototypical “Postcorporeal” to the slave of “The Fourth Cyborg Epistle: Entropy.” Slaviero leads us through a gallery of post-woman females. Gynoids, dolls, cyborgs and cybernetic mermaids litter laboratories of “amateur scientists and pornographers.” They are assembled, disassembled and programmed every conceivable way.
In The Red Queen Hypothesis, Slaviero delves into the construction of the post-woman feminine identity. She depicts in “The Mechanian:”
. . . He fashions her a solenoid
spine, electromagnetic thumbs, pulleys at her hips
and shoulders. She is milk and smoke, a dash
of candlepower, her wire antennae clacking
like ice cubes in a tumbler of gin. (pp. 9)
In “Now, a list of ingredients for the post-human ((cyborg)) body,” Slaviero provides an alchemical catalog of components for constructing these post-women:
butterfly throat :: diecast bronze :: dexterous clockwork arms
pouring libations of vodka :: an air-driven polymer muscle :: (pp. 18)
Celluloid Marionettes frequently places Slaviero’s beings in an Old West setting, depicting a quasi-frontier in her post-woman world. She describes in “Cyborg Cowgirl:”
My gunslinger arms rolling loose & inhuman.
A woman casting analog codes in the direction
of the old west. A turn-key metaphor
for collage, piecework. (pp. 27)
All the while, human essence is stripped. In”Origin Story:”
. . . We suffer amnesia
of the body, believe anything can emerge
from a stoma. A dragon. Artichoke hearts.
A prophet that looks like a hologram but isn’t. (pp. 31)
Boolean Fairy Tales twists fables of Snow White and Briar Rose, among others, into futuristic nightmares. In “If Snow White Were a Cyborg:”
. . . If she fell in a drug-
induced coma, the dwarves would have her head
cryogenically frozen, never realizing she only needed
the pills dislodged from her throat to awaken. (pp. 44)
Additionally, Slaviero continues (de)evolution in “Gretel Discusses Her Prosthetic Arm:”
I have become more than mere
girl. I am an armory
dressed in gingham and lace.
You would never suspect
that my ulna is a loaded gun,
that the bend in my elbow bears teeth. (pp. 48)
In the concluding Ontology of the Virtual Body, Slaviero uses various religious images to convey the final establishment of her post-woman world. “Our Lady of Machinery” highlights complete subjugation of the feminine:
. . . She is matrilineal code,
a thaumaturgic model. O siren! O martyr! Her face
is a Marian illusion, a flickering virgin in your
garbled prayers. Your fiberglass reflection. (pp. 57)
“Cyborg Fantasies” presents the new feminine ideal. Slaviero asks:
What think-tank of amateur scientists
and pornographers devised the ideal feminine
bone structure in pressurized rooms? (pp. 62)
In her terrifying, superb penultimate “The Fourth Cyborg Epistle: Entropy,” she reveals an entity:
. . . mewling in the sawgrass as my limbs oxidize
among the wild parsnips. I am obliged to accept your brainmail, to
subject my self to your experiments . . . (pp. 70)
For all its futuristic language, Cyborgia really addresses the present state of women seen through the lens of their extinction. Slaviero’s cyborgs are today’s housewives, models, secretaries. The dehumanizing, the stripping away of the feminine is happening now, not in some ethereal post-human universe. Her machines are our wives and mothers and daughters, their human-ness reduced to “fevered hearts swarming in a blue-lit aquarium.” (pp. 34) Thankfully, Slaviero reveals this corrosion, this deterioration in a convincing, inimitable style. Never shrill or panicked, she walks us calmly through her frightening catalog of poetic prophecy, indicating where we erred, warning how we will all shrivel to titanium bones if we continue hurtling like a starship down that black and freezing path.
Originally appeared in Chiron Review # 94, Spring 2011
August 9, 2010
Cyborgia crafts a “post-human,” pro(to)-woman, celluloid landscape helixed with a cyber-cabinet of curiosities—animatronic bones, cyborg cowgirls, teledildonics, and alien automatons. Slaviero’s book is the robochild of Alice in Wonderland, Battlestar Galactica and Angela Carter, and equally as brilliant—full of wit, imagination, intelligence and a scathing playfulness: “You jacked in/to my dollslot, called me a slick witch”. Her poems navigate the fetishization and disassembly of female cyborgs as metaphor for the multiple violences enacted on women. Though Cyborgia hosts fishflesh and machetes, it shimmers with shapeshifting ability, is both kinetic and kaleidoscopic in providing a transgressive space for women. By the time she writes, “My voicebox is capable of murderous frequencies; I sing your soldiers down to sheets of skin,” I am irrevocably hooked into Slaviero’s frequency and her conquering talent
June 29, 2010
"[No virus was ever this pretty.:]" So ends Susan Slaviero's redolent, ambitious debut. Her poems themselves cyborgs, Slaviero's work embodies the stereotypically feminine while reeling toward posthumanism. A phantasmagoria, Cyborgia is a slightly grotesque, whip-smart collection that establishes Slaviero as a poet to watch.
November 27, 2010
Amazing language and philosophical thought in this book of poems that somehow blends feminism, technology, science fiction, mythology, and fairy tales together to create a whole new world, a future post-apocalypse world, perhaps, but one very present in the words and the imagination of this poet.
I plan to interview her in my blog!
I plan to interview her in my blog!
March 21, 2016
Actual Rating: 4.5 of 5 thorns
This language-based project examines woman as cyborg and uses this construction to talk about women's objectification and denial of personhood. This book is a bold and difficult endeavor done well.
This language-based project examines woman as cyborg and uses this construction to talk about women's objectification and denial of personhood. This book is a bold and difficult endeavor done well.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews