Electronic Corpse: Poems from a Digital Salon, Heath M. Ayodele

In 2012, inspired by the early 20th century French surrealist parlor game, Exquisite Corpse, M Ayodele Heath began hosting collaborative poetry-making sessions, or digital salons, on his Facebook page. To date, more than 150 poets participated in these virtual events. Heath chose the very best 50 poems, out of hundreds, to carefully catalogue, assemble and preserve.

The anthology has three sections: collaborative poems, poems from the most frequent contributors and a step-by-step guide for the reader. What sounds like a very straight-forward book of poetry is a complex, unique and layered book. In the same way the visual surface of an electronic device is straight forward and intuitive, the back end of that device contains layer upon layer of parts and programming. Heath, uses the structure of the anthology to encourage the reader to discover poems and poetry writing in new ways.

The contributors (representing over 20 U.S. states and 4 countries) in Electronic Corpse: Poems From A Digital Salon are deeply symbolic. Crafted by poets of all colors, nationalities, genders, and classes, they are simply poems. Poems made by people who entered into a playful language exercise with no expected outcome or pre-conceived agenda. They are an example of what *we* can create together.

In an online open mic there will still be a segment of people who really only want to socialize in the margins, or poets who will argue for just the right moment of stage time. What makes the poems that appear in this collection rise above ego tradition is that the end result comes seemingly out of a hive mind; most of the poems dont sound like five, six or seven authors, but one. -Scott Woods

Theres a whimsy and generosity inherent in the readers interactions with these works. The poems belong to the group. And so the poems are not about perfection, but the wild observations, whit, and elation these poems contain. Reading Electronic Corpse is like watching a game of spades spun into verse. -Yona Harvey

Carefully curated by M. Ayodele Heath, the anthology, Electronic Corpse: Poems from a Digital Salon, and the process that sparked it challenge both notions. Disparate, ringing voices join under single prompts from other voices to create new and thriving, evocative poems; sometimes as one speaker, sometimes a chorus, each poem a discovery, a celebration of community, the glory and vital need for poets to bear witness to language and our world. -Georgia A. Popoff