The Algorithm of I is Jack Crocker's
second collection of poems.
In The Algorithm of I, Jack Crocker holds
up a mirror to the human condition
whose reflections, while intensely personal,
are timeless in their search for an
essential self. Thinking of the three great
and simple images in whose presence the
artist's heart first opened-"the gospel
womb of Delta dirt," his "father's walls,"
or "Linda Boykin's lips"-the speaker
tracks himself in the multiple selves
orbiting the center.
The chronology suggests a constant state
of becoming. From the "ancestral prison"
of birth to being "Programmed between
the contradiction of predestination and
the hubris of free," imagination becomes
the way to reconcile life's painful disequilibrium
between the aspirations of
hope and inevitable concessions to despair.
While every leaf may be "a tongue
of grief," "spring revives the beauty of
death."
But like "spiraled genes a Monet has
laced," it is less sadness that draws us to
these poems than the osmosis of intelligence
and heart that shines through so
brilliantly. Like his hero Sisyphus, "step
by completed step," the poet's revenge is
stronger than his rock, giving and vitalizing.
Compelled to make art out of "the
seeing of doubt" he arrives at cautious
hope as "The battered atoms of the heart
go on arranging themselves/in the possibility
of human love and revolt," seeking
truth "in the light of pretend."
