Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. Women's Studies. Science. Winner of the 2015 Washington Prize. Building technology into linguistic pyrotechnics into questions of human procreation, Duffey challenges the reader's mind to engage on countless levels. Jacqueline Osherow says, Who would have believed that machines could be so sexy, that 'a piston in its shaft' would make us blush? Duffey gives not only life to machines, but eroticism and pathos, uses machines to reveal those essential qualities in us. And she does this in language so extraordinarily acute and precise that we might be tempted to think her poems are themselves, machines, except for the fact that each is so eccentric, so singular, so movingly and exquisitely human. James Allen Hall says, There is nothing simple about SIMPLE MACHINES--except perhaps the withering statements that strike ache into the heart, or the images that haunt us after reading Duffey's gorgeous words.
