Heredities

by J. Michael Martinez

Book Overview

In his award-winning first book, J. Michael Martinez reenvisions Latino poetics and its current conceptions of cultural identity. In Heredities, he opens a historically ravaged continental body through a metaphysical dissection into Being and silence. The hand manipulates a surgical etymology through the spine: the longitude where "history gathers in the name we never are." The poems seek to speak beyond codified aesthetics and dictated identity...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807136433
• ISBN13: 9780807136430
• Release Date: May 2010
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.6" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Conversations about Identity

J. Michael Martinez was born and raised in Greeley, Colorado, and while he is not an immigrant any more than the rest of us are immigrants because our families came to this melting pot from all the countries of the world, Martinez concentrates his liquid silver poetry on exploring his Hispanic heritage in such a way that the immediacy of his home in the USA seems just won, giving focus to the myriad aspects of retaining cultural identity in a new lodging place better than most poets writing today. Contained in the pages of this very beautifully produced volume of his poetry are three sections: 'Heredities I Etymology, Heredities II Corporeity, and Heredities III Archetype. To appreciate these three divisions of poems, each containing extended thought processes that reflect his concern with memory and myth, magic and reality, and the sustainability of it all, the entire sets must be read in context. Each set of thoughts is apparently simple expressions of conversations, but upon reading and re-reading these poems the depth of perception and understanding of blood line inheritance becomes more fascinating and difficult. But as an example, here is an excerpt: The Lady of Guadalupe's Dream and Jade Ruin And she said: Does darkness list our erasures and become beautiful? And she said: Those I love, I translate into advent and wild foxgrape, the blind staggers of water. And then she said: The dead will return, narrow gates unlatched. To which she replied: His body is air written between my hands. Which is when she carved an arrow upon linden, leaf & chaff. Which is when the butterflies hatched from her footprint. Which was how she cut her fingers with seaweed and bitter jewel. Which was when our martyr became the hour of unsung seeds. Reading J. Michael Martinez is much like taking a journey into history, discovering the meanings of symbols and words that suddenly appear to us as understandable. There is such beauty in his phrasing and his word cropping and his expressionistic impressions that he surely will become an important poet of our time. Significantly he closes his book with this short work: You said, The infinite is the origin you foster. I said, History gathers in the name we never are. Welcome to a new poet of significance! Grady Harp, July 10