How To Write A Mistake-ist Poem

by Chris Martin

In the words of the author:

I was enamored of Mistake-ism before I ever knew it existed. The way Navajo blankets must bear a flaw. Aleatory day breaking into tiny acts of unknowing. It's like I could feel inside the nerve fibers of animals, how they'd flare into readiness. No armor, no geometry. Later, I came across the works of many artists working within the field of Mistake-ism. Cassavettes and Rowlands, Thelonious Monk, Ono, Basquiat, etc. I learned from Harmony Korine that Mistake-ism should not be merely funny, or beautiful, or tragic, but all of these at once and in no particular order. Each Mistake-ist act leads one back to where things start, tricking existence into a perpetual middle. The way walking is actually a protracted fall; life is one long slip on the spirit's banana peel.

40 pages, Letterpressed Chapbook

First published February 1, 2011

About the author

Chris Martin is this very moment endeavoring to become himself, a somemany and tilted thinking animal who sways, hags, loves, trees, lights, listens, and arrives. He is a poet who teaches and learns in mutual measure, as the connective hub of Unrestricted Interest/TILT and the curator of Multiverse, a series of neurodivergent writing from Milkweed Editions. His most recent book of poems is Things to Do in Hell (Coffee House, 2020) and his first book of nonfiction is May Tomorrow Be Awake: On Poetry, Autism, and Our Neurodiverse Future (HarperOne, 2022). He lives on the edge of Bde Maka Ska in Minneapolis, among the mulberries and burr oaks, with Mary Austin Speaker and their two bewildering creatures.