“Hackers” by Aase Berg [Why This Book Should Win]

Stark and minimal, Hackers thrums with a biology inherent to Berg’s poetics, an exoskeleton of language guarding what vulnerable element is contained therein. There is an honesty here that, like most of Berg work, is almost frightening to encounter. The path to Aase Berg’s poems reads “proceed with caution.” It is not because the poems are dangerous, but rather because there is something within the reader which might break upon reading them.