Writing Through the Mutant Continuum

a book review of Poetechnics: Designs from the New World

poerty by Yaxkin Melchy

translated by Ryan Greene

Reading Yaxkin Melchy’s collection Poetechnics: Designs from the New World (Cardboard Press, 2023) was a mediation on curiosity. Rarely do I walk away from a collection where I’m just as hypnotized by the author’s ethos as I am their work. Often these aspects inform one another, I see who a poet is via their work. But after reading the collection, I was hungry for both more poetry by Melchy and to pick his brain. Where does someone get the idea (the gall!) to fuse what is often seem diametrically opposed—science and poetry; the objective and subjective?

When one completes the collection, they are greeted by Ryan Greene’s translator’s note which states that Poetechnics is a selection of poems derived from Melchy’s decade long project, THE NEW WORLD, which he began as a 21-year old industrial design student.

Without sounding too corny, this collection functions as a machine. The invention, or perhaps, the world Melchy develops is the Poetechnics— “a scientific imaginary rooted in the heart, and a sensitive understanding of scientific theories and methods in order to overcome the modern world’s poetic disconnection.” Throughout the collection form, language, and muse are not bent, but rather, adapted to reflect our Digital Age. Titles are shifted around the page, the poems have become diagrams. We are in an era where we consume more information than generations past. Poetechnics embodies that everythingness.

Melechy’s work, with the help of his translator, Greene—who, like Melechy, has a dual knowledge of science and the arts—weave Spanish and English together. The translation is not merely an English version, but rather part of the poetic puzzle. This is inductive of a poet who has full command of the world they created, and languages this world exists within.

Melchy explores this new form with such fluidity, it’s as if it has always existed. Because why not— why shouldn’t poetry grow and expand, just as the scientific understanding of our natural world has? After reading, I was left feeling hopeful. While I do not know if this was the intent, the collection reads as a celebration of human curiosity. Both scientists and poets are in the business of distilling the world around them while also expanding it. The professions mirror each other. Or as Melchy said, “their heart is shaped like science/science is shaped like their heart.”

Thank you, Yaxkin Melchy.