The Machine Autocorrects Code to I - by Chanlee Luu (Paperback)

About the Book

A witty, surprising, and both fiercely committed and fiercely imaginative debut poetry collection. A wild delight of a book!

Book Synopsis

A knock-out debut that erases the boundaries of time and geography with unrestrained wit, The Machine Autocorrects Code to I holds its subjects - family members at odds with their hopes and fears, various fruits and animals constrained by the laws of humans, and an alien seeking beauty in the world - with tenderness and wry knowledge of the fragile systems that hold their world in place. This universe of poems wanders through the messy past, battles in the charged present, and dreams/nightmares to the unknown future. In this experiment in forms, Chanlee Luu is a mad scientist, cracking Asian jokes, shoveling golden sand, and coding her voice to vitality.

This collection takes us on a poetic journey that intertwines racial/cultural identity with gender, politics, and the environment while also traversing time and place. This is a voice that curves, twists, and spirals around language to create new meaning. As readers, we are challenged to enter these innovative poetic forms and engage with the multiple stories being told through poems that speak to one another. With this book, Chanlee Luu has created a new landscape for poetry. -Pauline Kaldas, author of The Measure of Distance.

Luu shows herself to be a poet of dazzling ambition and range. This vibrant collection traverses the psychospiritual terrain of the many facets that constitute "I." A Whitmaniac study of the multitudes of being that venerates spirituality, origins, and political outrage with the same care as is given to pancakes, puzzles, and pop stars. Luu puts the blank spaces into words; you won't be able to shake off this book anytime soon. - Candice Wuehle, author of Monarch.

Review Quotes

Chanlee Luu's The Machine Autocorrects Code to I is an ambitious new entry into a larger field of feminist Asian American speculative poetics... Luu is writing neither confessionalism nor realism because, as the poems of The Machine Autocorrects Code to I declare, "reality" is a fantastical landscape as fragile and ripe for discovery as Faerie or any alien planet. And, Luu suggests, with a sense of that wonder, perhaps the real can be reshaped, reframed, and remade-not towards utopian flawlessness but towards genuine regeneration.-- Strange Horizons, February, 2025

Chanlee Luu's debut poetry collection is radiant - witty, surprising, and both fiercely committed and fiercely imaginative. A wild delight of a book! - Anne Boyer, author of The Undying, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

In this dynamic arc of poems, Chanlee Luu details cultural folklore, the bizarre enterprise of being alive, and the familial and personal intimacies that tether the Vietnamese and English languages. Luu's deceptively digestible syntax gives way to strange scenes in which "Vietnamese moms secretly rave," "Inertia becomes chaos," and we receive lessons in chemical engineering. Luu's lyrical landscapes cover numerous far-flung cities. I found myself thinking of the eclectic poetics of Christine Shan Shan Hou, and also of Harryette Mullen-but don't be mistaken: Chanlee Luu sounds like no one else other than herself. - Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Root Fractures and Ghost Of.

At once zany and controlled, inventive and attuned to poetic tradition, Chanlee Luu's debut collection marries languages and disciplines (chemistry, literature, music, math) in ways that feel unexpected yet natural. With a stealth abecedarian, with golden shovels that could slip by unnoticed if they were not labeled, Luu shows equal adeptness at free and unfree verse and an abiding sense of music and story. Opening into a fascinating mind, these poems enlighten, surprise, and delight. - Adrienne Su, author of Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet: Essays and Interviews and Peach State.