The Algorithm of I

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."