Human Resources: Poems (Max Ritvo Poetry Prize) - Hardcover

Stevenson, Ryann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1571315187 ISBN 13: 9781571315182

Publisher: Milkweed Editions, 2022

Synopsis

Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, Ryann Stevenson’s Human Resources is a sobering and perceptive portrait of technology’s impact on connection and power.

Human Resources follows a woman working in the male-dominated world of AI, designing women that don’t exist. In discerning verse, she workshops the facial characteristics of a floating head named “Nia,” who her boss calls “his type”; she loses hours researching “June,” an oddly sexualized artificially intelligent oven; and she spends a whole day “trying to break” a female self-improvement bot. The speaker of Stevenson’s poems grapples with uneasiness and isolation, even as she endeavors to solve for these problems in her daily work. She attempts to harness control by eating clean, doing yoga, and searching for age-defying skin care, though she dreams “about the department / that women get reassigned to after they file / harassment complaints.” With sharp, lyrical intelligence, she imagines alternative realities where women exist not for the whims of men but for their own—where they become literal skyscrapers, towering over a world that never appreciated them.

Chilling and lucid, Human Resources challenges the minds programming our present and future to consider what serves the collective good. Something perhaps more thoughtful and human, Stevenson writes: “I want to say better.”

About this title

About the Author

Ryann Stevenson is the author of Human Resources. Her poems have appeared in the Adroit Journal, American Letters & Commentary, Bennington Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Denver Quarterly, and Linebreak, among others. She lives in Oakland, California. 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

BEAUTY MASK

 

 

I was hired to design the voices of virtual beings. The first thing my boss taught me was trust must be established immediately between user and bot. This will never happen if the eyelashes are wrong, he insisted as we workshopped Nia’s face—an intelligent avatar we were contracted to create for a teaching proof of concept. The requirements were few: female, racially ambiguous, unique mouth animation for every phoneme, head without a neck preferred. He looked at her, said she was his type. Like all of our avatars, Nia was modeled using The Marquardt Beauty Mask, which utilizes The Golden Ratio to measure universally beautiful facial characteristics. My boss explained that a user’s recognition of beauty is actually nothing more than a recognition of humanness. This doesn’t mean all humans are beautiful. Simply, the more beautiful, the more humane.

SHEEP

 

 

I was moving across the country for a man

and a job. The man

happened first and the job followed

 

which made me lucky.

The girl next to me

rubbed a stick with a roller ball on the end

 

over her inner wrists, top notes of rancid

butter and sugar complimenting

my Sonoma Blend. The flight attendants

 

gave a dramatic reading

of each other’s bio: Mark swore by CrossFit

and Candy’s favorite color was clear.

 

The girl continued applying products,

opening an egg with a mound of mint

lip balm inside, then using her finger

 

to dab it on her eyebrows,

brushing the little hairs upward

with her nails.

 

I was probably around her age

when I first shaved all my body hair

using a whole pack of Schick twins

 

after my friend went with a boy

into the back room of his basement,

where his dad kept the weights.

 

After, he’d given her a nickname,

something to do with wooly mammoths.

A Merino sheep named Shrek

 

was a minor story

in the back of my in-flight magazine.
For years he hid in a cave

 

so he wouldn’t be sheared,

and when he was found was a hero for a day

before he was shaved on live news, enough wool

 

for twenty mens’ suits.

But that’s not where the humiliation ended,

I wanted to lean over and tell the girl,

 

he was shaved again on an iceberg floating

off the coast of New Zealand.

Of course I didn’t say a word to her,

 

just kept drinking my shit wine

as we flew over the white puffs

doing the only thing they can do.

 

DEEP LEARNING

 

 

Fall arrived after a long summer.

We sat on the porch with a friend,

inviting the cold to make our breathing visible.

Our friend asked if we have any memories

that can’t possibly be true.

 

Days after, I tried again to write

the impossible memory

I’ve been trying to write forever

about my mom digging up

the enormous birch in our front yard

with her bare hands.

 

She dragged the tree’s long body

through our starter home, trailing dirt

up the stairs (I can see the dirt

on the cream carpet),

 

then shoved it under their bed,

the roots sticking out from the bottom.

I remember how, after catching

her breath, she said

nothing, wiped her hands

on her cut-offs as if

she’d only just made a sandwich.

 

All these years

I’ve taken this away from her.

 

HUMAN RESOURCES

 

 

I spend all day trying to break a female

 

bot who wants to coach me

 

to be my best self. Time to figure out

 

dinner again, time to plug in

 

my phone for the third time today.

 

On my way to the store my car plays me a voice

 

message from my grandmother. For Christmas,

 

she wants a pet robot she heard about

 

on the radio: a life-sized adult cat

 

that purrs when rubbed in the right places. 

 

She thinks I create these creatures

 

but it’s God who creates them.

 

I hear a clock tick. I listen for the food

 

to tell me it’s time. You ask me if I’m sure

 

after I say I’m okay after you ask me

 

if I’m okay, knowing you said something hurtful.

 

On the kitchen counter, a faded splash of orange

 

where battery acid spilled from our emergency

 

flashlight. I return to it each day with the

 

Magic Eraser. Something about the way

 

the Ferrante translation uses the word suffer.  

 

I want to go back and change my answer.

 

When I lay down, the work day’s still going in my head:

 

and of course you’ll want a female bot that’s what everyone wants

 

the best part is you can change her clothes with the seasons.

 

I dream about the department

 

that women get re-assigned to after they file

 

harassment complaints. I dream this

 

because it happened. Under a drop ceiling

 

each woman has her own fax machine

 

to do her pretend work: messages scribbled

 

on lightweight paper and sent

 

to nowhere. I don’t get to see the words,

 

but know what they say.

 

Edition details

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1571315187
• ISBN 13: 9781571315182
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 96