The Falling Down Dance

by Chris Martin

Martin's lines are a brief as breath, and cloister us at home, in winter, where the tiny everyday ministrations of love and parenthood are magnified and abundant with meaning. I wanted to tell you something
About the shipwreck
Of fatherhood, of motherhood, the coarse
Sugar leaving us
Shook. Soft wreck of the baby
Greeting each kiss
With an open
And drooling mouth, reflex
We don't understand
Heart-blip stuck
Tipping my finger
On the keys, speeding
Memory of yesterday out
The window I'm
Pushing barely open
Chris Martin is the author of American Music (Copper Canyon, 2007) and Becoming Weather (Coffee House Press, 2011).

Genres: Poetry

90 pages, Paperback

First published November 10, 2015

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.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong collection of poems about the joys, fears, and hopes that come with parenthood. The poet compacts a lot of feeling and truth into very terse lines and the reader gets a sense of the whirlwind ride becoming a parent can be. Sharp and truthful.

[Ellison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of non-rhyming poems/essays mostly about the author's son, the weather, and teeth. Occasional insight into the human condition, then he resorts to swearing.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a big CM fan, so of course I liked this book, which mostly details having a kid and thinking through the way the kid uses language, the difference between song and sense, all that. But I still wanted something more engaged than all that, somehow. I get it-- the experience is domestic, and the poems reflect that. But I wanted a slightly wider range of interests, and a slightly more varied sense of formal constraint here. I think these are mostly lineated, one stanza poems, even when they are pretty long, and I wanted something a little more rigorous, or else something that showed the trace of a different kind of pressure than just getting the poems down. Oh well and poor me.

[Baileigh Limestahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of poetry for a midwestern winter