Babbage's Dream

by Neil Aitken

In Neil Aitken's exquisite poems, Charles Babbage, inventor and thinker comes to life in an array of stunning images. The poems spark and leap in exhilarating assemblages as we piece together the narrative behind the concept of the programmable computer but further beyond, Aitken invites us to ask questions about consciousness, thought, and who we are in our daily lives. The jolt of the past comes back as "the bit of code we've let loose in the dark" and the fractals return as a heart in mourning. This is a transfixing book on memory, the human mind, and the possibility of rebirth in unexpected but musical planes.
—Oliver de la Paz, Author of Requiem for the Orchard

Genres: Poetry

84 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Neil Aitken is the author of two full-length books of poetry: The Lost Country of Sight (Anhinga 2008), winner of the Philip Levine Prize and Babbage's Dream (Sundress Publications, 2017), a semi-finalist for the Anthony Hecht Prize. His poetry chapbook, Leviathan was published in 2016 by Hyacinth Girl Press and recently received an Elgin Award from the SFPA. He is also the founding editor of Boxcar Poetry Review and administrator of book tour resource Have Book Will Travel (www.havebookwilltravel.com). His poems have appeared in Barn Owl Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Drunken Boat, Poetry Southeast, RHINO, Sou'wester, and Washington Square, and several anthologies. He is a Kundiman fellow and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. In collaboration with Chinese poet-translator Ming Di, he translated The Book of Cranes by Zang Di and later, Ming Di's own first selected poems, River Merchant's Wife (Marick Press 2012). Most recently, he co-translated the work of seven poets for New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, 1990-2012, (Tupelo 2013). He received the inaugural DJS Translation Prize for his translation work.

More information can be found on his website: www.neil-aitken.com "

Reviews

[Tom]

Here's the opening to my review. The whole review can be found here: https://thelinebreak.wordpress.com/20...

Charles Babbage was a mathematician, inventor, and even philosopher, but he is mostly known as “the father of the computer,” as he designed the first “analytical engine.” He is also the main focus of Neil Aitken’s _Babbage’s Dream_ (Sundress Publications, 2016). However, this is no biography, and it’s not a string of found poems. For Aitken, Babbage becomes not only a lens through which to examine Babbage’s emotions and an artist’s and scientist’s endeavors with creation, but the 56 pages of poems (two of which first appeared in Redactions: Poetry & Poetics) and nine pages of notes also tend toward ontology and explore what it is to be a struggling human.

[Lori Byrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any poet in my book is a genius! How do you do that? I really enjoyed this book. Brilliant!

[Jeff Cliff · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars - 1 star for still being under copyright = 0.5 stars

Read concurrent with Walter Scott, which was unfortunate. There's really no contest between the two, even with the hindsight of a chunk of the 21st century to guide Aitken: the power of Scott's prose is completely prepotent.

I found the use of 'comments' creative, useful and original and that fact salvages this book from being a total write off. The padding of the end of the book with notes of why the poems were written the way they were seemed excessive and unnecessary. The book should stand on its own, without these extra hints. At the same time it was written too much for the layman -- as a software developer beyond keywords and some background context there wasn't much that spoke to me. Nothing really new here, just some guy's vision of what Babbage might have thought (and it wasn't even clear he had fully read deep enough to even know).

I get that Babbage inspired this -- but I cannot get behind the explicit use of his name here. Once I tried to ignore Babbage being anachronistically involved in such modern thoughts I found the book was pleasant enough...but the final poems brought back to the main theme in what was mostly informed if plain guesswork.

[May Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only heard of Babbage in passing: his work, his legacy. Not much of his personality or humanity. Our circles never overlapped. Then I read this book of poetry. By the middle of it we had become acquaintances. By the end, I felt I'd lost a friend.

[Theresa Wade · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a very enjoyable collection of poems to read. As a QA and Data Analyst, I could relate to Neil's theme of poems. It is hard to pick a favorite one. (Return, Comment, Babbage Troubled by Vision at His Wife's Grave, 1827 is sad).