Red-Haired Android by Jeremy Reed

Jeremy Reed is a brilliant and prolific poet with a unique voice, probably one of the most interesting poets writing in English at the current time. He writes poetry that is vividly engaged with life and what it means to be human.


Red-Haired Android contains a lot of science fiction poems, poems about aliens, whether from outer space or the alienation of modern humankind from our environment and poems that play with alternate realities and possible futures. There are also poems about art, music, and sexual identity. Some poems combine contemplation of relationships with a consideration of how poetry works, this is from Ways There:


Blue feathers fall from a blue sky.
The poem that I'll write shows through
in fragmentary hieroglyphics, its speed
too fast to slow into focus.
It overshoots the lights on the airstrip.


Jeremy Reed can also write beautiful nature poetry:


from Martins


Shrill interjections at twilght
up there in the pointillistic crazing
of aerial plankton
jamming on insect glitter
they are to the ear and eye an alert
to the day's passing, a black scud
shot through by their zigzag curvatures


But a short review like this really can't do justice to his poetry, find one of his many books (preferably this one!) and enjoy for yourself!