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    Gatekeeper: Poems
    Gatekeeper: Poems
    Gatekeeper: Poems
    Ebook96 pages33 minutes

    Gatekeeper: Poems

    By Patrick Johnson and Khaled Mattawa

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    About this ebook

    A prize-winning poetry collection that delves into the dark wood of the digital underworld: “Impressive . . . thought-provoking.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

    What is the deep web? A locked door. A tool for oppression and for revolution. “An emptying drain, driven by gravity.” And in Patrick Johnson’s Gatekeeper—selected by Khaled Mattawa as the winner of the 2019 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry—it is the place where connection is darkly transfigured by distance and power.

    So we learn as Johnson’s speaker descends into his inferno, his Virgil a hacker for whom “nothing to stop him is reason enough to keep going,” his Beatrice the elusive Anon, another faceless user of the deep web. Here is unnameable horror—human trafficking, hitmen, terrorism recruitment. And here, too, is the lure of the beloved. But gone are the orderly circles of hell. Instead, Johnson’s map of the deep web is recursive and interrogatory, drawing inspiration and forms from the natural world and from science, as his speaker attempts to find a stable grasp on the complexities of this exhilarating and frightening digital world.

    Spooky and spare, Gatekeeper is a striking debut collection and a suspenseful odyssey for these troubled times.

    “These fascinating poems rest on the assumption that each of us has two selves: one that occupies space in the ‘real’ world and another that exists only in a movie that plays continuously at the back of our minds. With our hands on a computer keyboard, we have a third, cyborg, self. The poetic enactment of the splitting of these multiple selves is mesmerizing.” —Mary Jo Bang
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateDec 10, 2020
    ISBN9781571317148
    Gatekeeper: Poems
    Author

    Patrick Johnson

    Patrick Johnson is an assistant teaching professor at Georgetown University. He previously taught at Marquette University and William Jewell College after receiving his PhD in physics from Washington University in St. Louis. Patrick gained his passion for Star Wars from his father, Eric, and has continued that throughout his life, watching the entire series in a marathon before the premieres of both Episode I and Episode VII. When not teaching physics or watching Star Wars, Patrick spends his time doing improv comedy with a local DC group. He is the author of The Physics of Star Wars.

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      Book preview

      Gatekeeper - Patrick Johnson

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