“In stunningly elegant couplets, Neil Aitken transposes the dreams of machines and humans into musical, sonically deft lyrics that sing songs of creation, vision, possibility, futurity. These beautifully crafted poems—evoking the designs of nineteenth-century mathematician Charles Babbage, who conceptualized the first mechanical programmable computer—explore the tautologies between mathematics and song, science and lyric, the rational and the passionate, dystopia and hope. In the infinite tape loop of memory and imagination, Babbage’s Dream posits a Turing Test in which the reader circles both anxiously and gloriously through aspects of making, maker, and the made.”
—Lee Ann Roripaugh, author of Dandarians
“Through Aitken’s long lyrical lines and guided by narrative threads, I was pleased to make the acquaintance of the polymath Charles Babbage, his 19th century world and his language: the language of science and engineering, a language that at once halts and captivates. Come inside the Aitken’s Babbage’s Dream for new perceptions of the world.”
—Kimiko Hahn, author of Brain Fever
“In Neil Aitken’s exquisite poems, Charles Babbage, inventor and thinker, comes to life in an array of stunning images. The poems spark and leap in exhilarating assemblages as we piece together the narrative behind the concept of the programmable computer but further beyond, Aitken invites us to ask questions about consciousness, thought, and who we are in our daily lives. The jolt of the past comes back as ‘the bit of code we’ve let loose in the dark’ and the fractals return as a heart in mourning. This is a transfixing book on memory, the human mind, and the possibility of rebirth in unexpected but musical planes.”
—Oliver de la Paz, author of Requiem for the Orchard