Cyborg Detective

Jillian Weise is a poet, performance artist and disability rights activist. Her first book of poetry, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, was recently reissued in a 10th anniversary edition with a new preface. Her second book of poetry, The Book of Goodbyes, won the 2013 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and the 2013 Isabella Gardner Award from BOA Editions. Cyborg Detective is her third poetry collection. Weise identifies as a cyborg, and her essays on cyborg identity and disability rights have appeared in The New York Times, Granta, and elsewhere. She hosts a series of satirical videos highlighting literary ableism under the persona Tispy Tullivan.

“With a voice that is sassy, funny, and justifiably bitter, Weise sets ableist America — and America's literary subcultures — straight about a number of things in her third collection, in which every line snaps and many of them sting.”—Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR Poetry Preview 2019“Here—and almost nowhere else in American poetry—we have an anarchic sharp-fanged satirist of the very first rank.”—RHINO“Cyborg Detective looks into the past as it pushes into the future. Moving deftly between engaging with canonical authors and broken engagements, between Torah and Tinder, Weise focuses on the many ways we see the parts and not the whole and the consequences thereof.”—American Literary Review“Always sharp-witted, sophisticatedly savvy, and commanding in surprisingly vulnerable ways, Weise’s poems remind me that the stakes are high, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun.”—The Rumpus“Anger, clarity, an unrelenting unforgiving ear; funny, hot, intelligent, wise, challenging, outrageous and cool. Jillian Weise is simply among the small league of my favorite poets on earth. With Cyborg Detective she’s even more so. She’s ONLY AWAKE and freely and incisively shares all that comes with that awesome and sinuous burden.”—Eileen Myles“The poems in Jillian Weise’s Cyborg Detective concern the nature of affliction. Which is not to say it’s not humorous; it is, in fact, hilarious, deeply and darkly so. Populated with a variety of voices that speak with a sort of sly candor that can only be prompted by the most intimate of inquiries, this book is a true ventriloquist act. With a thrilling lack of remorse, Weise targets the mundane viciousness of everyday hypocrisy like a heat-seeking missile.”—Cate Marvin"These poems are brilliant and funny and sad and utterly essential. They will completely unravel you in the most marvelous possible way."—Lev Grossman“Cyborg Detective investigates the way we peer into the Abled world, and finds confusion and terror in the reflection. It is a relief and joy to read."—Karolyn Gehrig, creator of #HospitalGlam