"Chris Martin . . . takes the O'Hara city poet eye in his own direction,
showing a sweet vision for the distance between public and private
spaces."--Jacket
American Music, selected by C. D. Wright from over one thousand
manuscripts as winner of the Hayden Carruth Award for New and Emerging
Poets, is uniquely attuned to the feedback symphony of a modern city,
the lyrical product of "an earnest rage born of the absurd."
Chris Martin's poems reflect all things found in the urban environment:
asphalt, subways, technology, strangers, the drudgery of work, the
garbage trucks and open parks, fist fights and snapshots, fears and
paranoia, loves and joys. Here is the constant sense of life hurtling
forward without the time to reflect, within a city rife with
opportunities: "I can practically / Hear all those words out / There
amassing to make the journey / Inward."
American Music is a jostling of the senses; a decadent descent into
the throbbing of a metropolitan world filled with familiar but yet
unresolved queries:
. . . it strikes me
That every person in every passenger
Seat in every car in
Every town in every country
Is having some goddamn
Thought--this is mine.
Chris Martin is a rapper, teacher, and editor of Puppy Flowers, an
online magazine of the arts. He holds an MA in poetry, performance, and
education from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York
University. He lives in Brooklyn.
