60 Textos

by Sarah Riggs

Poetry. A companion volume to Riggs's books 28 Telegrams, 43 Post-Its and 38 Instant Messages, 60 TEXTOS continues the poet's investigation into the ways affect and technology co-exist. "Texto" is French for "text message," and these stark, uncanny, often funny poems fleetingly and memorably transform the cell-phone screen into a book.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

Sarah Riggs is the author of five books of poetry in English: Waterwork (2007), Chain of Minuscule Decisions in the Form of a Feeling (2007), 60 Textos (2010), Autobiography of Envelopes (2012), and Pomme & Granite (2015). She has translated and co-translated six books of contemporary French poetry into English, including most recently Oscarine Bosquet’s Present Participle and Etel Adnan’s Time. Sarah Riggs lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Are we destined / to repeat ourselves, / or can we make new / mistakes each time"

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riggs is a poet, translator and visual artist (and I think she lives in France). This is a quick little book of text-message-size poems, many of them that send beautiful little aftershocks through your heart. To quote one: "Sometimes I live in my cell phone, if only to be with you"
Another one: "Can we go out of the world together, even if we did not come in together?"
I'm not sure about the $14 cover price since it only takes ten minutes to read the whole thing, but it is an Ugly Duckling book and they do beautiful production on their books. I think my favorite UDP thing though is their 6 x 6 zine.

[Ewan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was calming to listen to.

https://textsound.org/index.php?ISSUE=23

"I will always remember you face in that moment. What we don't have in common, we create."

I like this kind of thing because it makes you wonder what kind of relationship and what kind of people would allow for such writerly text messages, they're little utopic exchanges

[Again and again and again · Rating 4 out of 5]

shows that length doesn't always equal more depth. these are gut punching, thought provoking

[Rupert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise communication and yet personal and profound, and yet... poetry.
So contemporary.
the beauty of the poetic language is that it cal give sense to everything, included the normally uberpragmatic or utterly devoid telephone messaging.
That’s what Sara Riggs does. And she does it very well.

[Geof Huth · Rating 4 out of 5]

For full review go see my review, "The Texts of Your Life."