Choosing an art form to reach a reader, listener, or viewer is one challenge. Inventing a new one is another. That is the ambition on display here. This “book,” if the label even fits, reads like a scrapbook of poems and fragments composed largely on a smartphone screen. Text shares space with visual elements. Some lines are struck through, suggesting self-censorship or second thoughts preserved in real time. The result raises immediate questions. What does it amount to as a whole? What is the reader meant to do with it? Those questions feel central to the project itself.

(anemia poems) by Ted Hahn resists tidy categorization. It works best as an experimental medium. Each fragment appears as if captured from a phone, pairing brief language with the design and constraints of a small screen. From these pieces, the reader is invited to assemble a narrative. Yet each image can also stand alone. The experience can be sequential. It can also be episodic, like poetry encountered one page at a time.

Poetry is the closest parallel. The style leans esoteric. It still offers a throughline for readers willing to meet it halfway. Hahn even instructs the audience on how to approach the work. He urges you to “look at each page like it’s a gift from an artist to you.” That line lands as a key. It sets the tone. It frames the act of reading as participation rather than decoding.

Accept the unconventional presentation, and something clearer comes into view. A diary of thought emerges. A running commentary on contemporary life follows. Hahn is preoccupied with modernity and technology. At times, he seems consumed by it. The smartphone becomes more than a delivery system. It becomes the canvas. The underlying claim feels pointed: the miniature computers in our pockets can produce art, if we allow them to.

This approach will not suit every reader. It is also bold. It is visually arresting. It is, at its best, genuinely fun. Like most experiments, it does not always resolve cleanly. Not every fragment will click. That may be the point. Hahn leaves space on purpose. Interpretation is part of the design. The collection becomes a set of disjointed, patchwork treasures assembled loosely, offered openly, and meant to be completed by the reader.

Pages: 359 | ASIN : B0FS4GTDTB