Icons: Poems - Tapa dura

Sinopsis

In exploring computer icons as cultural artefacts, elegant images, and bundles of code, Jonathan Reeve Price describes how they were originally created as part of a graphic user interface in the early days at Apple. He then reflects on how these little drawings have evolved and become ubiquitous in our culture. The images themselves, enlarged in these pages, are vivid graphic forms. Their functionality, name, and overtones speak to Price, and he lets us overhear his poetic response to each of 100 icons.
Computer icons carry culture, history, and code. As buttons, they awaken functions deep inside the system. As images, they evoke old technology, memes, and mysteries. And, as artwork bearing their own titles, they come loaded with implications, overtones, and attitude. In this book, you’ll enjoy getting a new perspective on such familiar but alien objects.
Kirkus Reviews--Price examines the deeper meanings underlying computer icons in this unconventional poetry collection. Combining technical insight and artistic expression, the poet focuses on 100 icons (of the available 3,000) from Google’s Material Design set, asking questions such as, “Is the image beautiful? Does the shape invite me to tap? Does the picture telegraph what the icon can do for me?”
He considers how several of the icons we use daily are relics of the past, from an attachment’s paper clip (“reminder / Of paper pages”) to an email’s letter shape (“The stamp—how quaint!”). The transition from tactile to virtual and the related grief over the loss of a physical world are recurring themes in the collection. “Brush” considers the “ancient tool” that “says take me in your hand, / Feel the soft bristles, dip them, and paint.” Of the heart icon users rely on to “favorite” online posts, he writes, “How many meanings this sign enacts. / It performs as noun, verb, and glyph” (“Favorite”). The bell, that incessant “attention parasite” that notifies users of activity, reminds the author of “the brass dinner bell that called / My grandfather in from loading hay” (“Bell”). “Reply_all” earns the label of “The most dangerous icon of all,” provoking shame that “sends you racing back, / As you replay that one unthinking click.” Price ends on “Ampersand,” praising that “Elegant emblem / Ornate placeholder / Connective pointer.” These poems are short yet thought-provoking, inviting readers to slow down and consider the meanings of the icons they mindlessly tap all day long.
Booklife--Sharp insights abound in Price’s crisp, plain-spoken verse (on the shopping cart icon: “Is this the archetype of America, the bin // We can never fill?”), and Price’s emotional range is broad enough to encompass satire, despair, and flashes of real feeling, especially in lines on icons whose designs harken back to the world before: paper clips, paint brushes, the three-columned facade of a bank. “Nothing says bank like a Greek temple // Holding your money, blocking // You from whatever is left."
The poet’s voice is knowledgeable and often funny, exposing the strangeness and power of such easy-to-overlook images (like the “Angular and sharp” Bluetooth “rune”) with wry asides and deeply human expressions of longing for greater connection. Icons both invites and playfully rewards readers for thinking more deeply about the standardized symbols of our digital lives.
Readers' Favorite: Five Stars
Jonathan Reeve Price takes an unusual and highly original viewpoint to deliver a captivating journey through the often-overlooked world of computer icons. The book's exploration revealed that these small symbols are so much more than we give them credit for, becoming indicators of culture, history, and the modern codes we live by. As simple and effective artworks, each with its own title, the icons come loaded with implications and attitudes that Price deftly unpacks in wonderful lyricism and bright, enthusiastic, exploratory text.
--K.C. Finn

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