What do you think?
Rate this book
Heaven Is All Goodbyes
The much-awaited second book by a truly revolutionary poet, in the lineage of Gil Scott Heron, Allen Ginsberg, Audre Lorde.
- GenresPoetryAfrican American
136 pages, Paperback
First published September 12, 2017
14 people are currently reading
514 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
September 12, 2017
Full disclosure: I've published Tongo and I designed this book for City Lights. That said. Buy this book 10 times the first time. You'll want to give it to everyone you talk to.
April 24, 2018
Heaven is All Goodbyes by Tongo Eisen-Martin is not a book about the end of the world. But the author’s second poetry collection, released by City Lights, has an feeling of being written from the brink of cataclysm.
In Eisen-Martin's verse, black men get out of cars “against white supremacy,” Europe reaches America “carrying headaches and mirrors,” alarms are made of gold, and in perhaps the most succinct description of our national circumstance, “People are newspapers / and actors / And the congregation is all going to die in character.”
I read this book while in the bathtub, with my ears below water, like I was listening to a pristine record with headphones. Musical references pepper this collection, so it is no wonder I had music in mind. There is a sublime cadence in Eisen-Martin’s work that is polyphonic, gritty, and unexpectedly fragile, like jazz. These poems yell, shriek, whisper, mumble in a mosaic of disenfranchised voices pondering police brutality, guns, the power of community, the terror of inherited addiction, and the cold nature of a city that blankets the poor and colored in oppression.
And of course, death, and the passing of the world.
In a recent interview for the Poetry Foundation, Eisen-Martin said that watching musicians gave him ideas: “For example (and to paraphrase), the saxophonist Sonny Rollins, speaking about soloing, said that what he does is start with a familiar phrase everyone recognizes, and then through the following notes walks away from it towards his subconscious.”
These poems certainly do that — walk away from themselves and toward a subconscious riff.
Probably the most unique aspect of Eisen-Martin’s style is the decentralization of power featured in his poems, from which he builds a spectacle. The “I” is often not writ large; instead, buildings, streets, and alleys have eminence:
When a neighborhood is in pain, houses stutter at each other
In a theater of human and plaster
No one ever goes free, but the walls become more thoughtful and
remember our names
Men think they are passing around cigarettes
But really the cigarettes are passing around men
houses stutter at each other
about the rich man’s world
and the poor man’s water
about the rich man’s world
and the poor man’s repetition
There is something comforting and soothing about this syntax, the way Eisen-Martin shifts the axis and importance of personhood from people to inanimate things. The air talks to itself in these poems, streets want to be ceilings, the coffin stares at the nails. And though there is grief in this work, it is often faceless, universal, and embodied—as in the last lines of The Confidence Scheme:
"I will buy you a drink tomorrow,"
the pain here told the pain there.
I don’t know about you, but it's exactly the type of poetry I would want to be reading at the end of the world — the kind that holds a mirror to itself, then a mirror to that mirror.
Eisen-Martin some years ago described poetry as being "every stitch of an expanding universe speaking for itself." The act of poetry was "the playfulness of people who are outnumbered and outgunned," in his eyes.
"The universe expands, possibly contracts, and always wants us to be free," he wrote. "And always we are ready for liberation. We are the universe looking at itself. Talking to itself. Healing itself. Instructing itself even. Always. We are ready for liberation."
In Eisen-Martin's verse, black men get out of cars “against white supremacy,” Europe reaches America “carrying headaches and mirrors,” alarms are made of gold, and in perhaps the most succinct description of our national circumstance, “People are newspapers / and actors / And the congregation is all going to die in character.”
I read this book while in the bathtub, with my ears below water, like I was listening to a pristine record with headphones. Musical references pepper this collection, so it is no wonder I had music in mind. There is a sublime cadence in Eisen-Martin’s work that is polyphonic, gritty, and unexpectedly fragile, like jazz. These poems yell, shriek, whisper, mumble in a mosaic of disenfranchised voices pondering police brutality, guns, the power of community, the terror of inherited addiction, and the cold nature of a city that blankets the poor and colored in oppression.
And of course, death, and the passing of the world.
In a recent interview for the Poetry Foundation, Eisen-Martin said that watching musicians gave him ideas: “For example (and to paraphrase), the saxophonist Sonny Rollins, speaking about soloing, said that what he does is start with a familiar phrase everyone recognizes, and then through the following notes walks away from it towards his subconscious.”
These poems certainly do that — walk away from themselves and toward a subconscious riff.
Probably the most unique aspect of Eisen-Martin’s style is the decentralization of power featured in his poems, from which he builds a spectacle. The “I” is often not writ large; instead, buildings, streets, and alleys have eminence:
When a neighborhood is in pain, houses stutter at each other
In a theater of human and plaster
No one ever goes free, but the walls become more thoughtful and
remember our names
Men think they are passing around cigarettes
But really the cigarettes are passing around men
houses stutter at each other
about the rich man’s world
and the poor man’s water
about the rich man’s world
and the poor man’s repetition
There is something comforting and soothing about this syntax, the way Eisen-Martin shifts the axis and importance of personhood from people to inanimate things. The air talks to itself in these poems, streets want to be ceilings, the coffin stares at the nails. And though there is grief in this work, it is often faceless, universal, and embodied—as in the last lines of The Confidence Scheme:
"I will buy you a drink tomorrow,"
the pain here told the pain there.
I don’t know about you, but it's exactly the type of poetry I would want to be reading at the end of the world — the kind that holds a mirror to itself, then a mirror to that mirror.
Eisen-Martin some years ago described poetry as being "every stitch of an expanding universe speaking for itself." The act of poetry was "the playfulness of people who are outnumbered and outgunned," in his eyes.
"The universe expands, possibly contracts, and always wants us to be free," he wrote. "And always we are ready for liberation. We are the universe looking at itself. Talking to itself. Healing itself. Instructing itself even. Always. We are ready for liberation."
Read
September 26, 2017Tongo's new book is dope as fuck.
December 12, 2017
I read a few poems. Then I looked up the author on YouTube to see how the poems are meant to sound. I’m so glad I did. Tongo recites the poems from memory. Amazing. The cadence and tone of the poems are better understood after watching the videos. I found that if I focus more on what the poems do than on trying to “really understand” what they mean, they do a lot and are amazing. First book of poetry to really get me excited about poetry again in a long while. Recommended.
August 24, 2018
Surreal. I found that discerning meaning from individual moments was difficult, but the overall effect is powerful, and even fun to read.
November 11, 2017
My first moment with Tongo Eisen-Martin's poetry was at a reading for this collection. He didn't open the book and read a poem or two, he drew upon the memory and emotion of the work he created and he spoke his words.
I know that I am failing to draw as much from the marks on the page without Tongo's recital, bringing spirit to the phrasing. There is just so much in the performance and I have only heard him share a few poems. I saw enough to know that there was a level I was missing on the page, though there is a whole lot to chew on even without the merging of written and oral poetry.
---
"Market Street" is the best two-word joke I have ever heard in / San Francisco
---
--as is the custom, two humans make a humanity
---
If you have not seen Tongo Eisen-Martin share his poetry, you are a web search away from a few examples. Pick up this book, spend some time with some videos, and if you ever have the opportunity...go see the poet share his work in our real world space.
I know that I am failing to draw as much from the marks on the page without Tongo's recital, bringing spirit to the phrasing. There is just so much in the performance and I have only heard him share a few poems. I saw enough to know that there was a level I was missing on the page, though there is a whole lot to chew on even without the merging of written and oral poetry.
---
"Market Street" is the best two-word joke I have ever heard in / San Francisco
---
--as is the custom, two humans make a humanity
---
If you have not seen Tongo Eisen-Martin share his poetry, you are a web search away from a few examples. Pick up this book, spend some time with some videos, and if you ever have the opportunity...go see the poet share his work in our real world space.
January 26, 2018
Don't make a scene
All friendships have dead people in them
All friendships have dead people in them
October 2, 2022
As always, many memorable lines--"nightmares written under your fingernails/ after a dig through your chest"--and syncopated rhythms triangulating hip hop and the deep blues. I've now read all of Eisen-Martin's published volumes and I'll keep with him as long as he writes. What I'm thinking about at this point is what makes one of his poems a poem as opposed to part of a continually unfolding stream of response to the world--think Lupe Fiasco's "Mural" raps. No answer as of now, maybe when I revisit the structures, deeper rhythms will reveal themselves. Among the pieces that stuck with me: "I have to talk to myself differently now," "may we all refuse to die at the same time," "Where Windows Should Be," "Snuck Between Pews too," "Four Walls," "Cut a Hand From a Hand," "But Rooftops Did All the Work," and the long closing poem, "The Oldest Then the Youngest."
February 16, 2020
Gotta read this book barefoot because your socks will just get knocked off.
August 28, 2023
I love when poetry is difficult and worth it, when the labor of savoring it reflects the skill of its craftsmanship. I love when language feels kneaded and fractured. i love poetry!!
March 1, 2020
Definitely a major artist, it does seem to me Eisen-Martin's clearest influence is Amiri Baraka, but his style is his own. Voices interact, become one, and then disipate again on the streets of San Francisco, and any major Amerikan city.
After reading the book, I watched a YouTube video of the author reading. The rage in Eisen-Martin's reading voice perhaps doesn't fully evoke the subtlety sardonic nature of his poetry, but then again maybe reading his work on paper doesn't convey the lived rage behind the work.
After reading the book, I watched a YouTube video of the author reading. The rage in Eisen-Martin's reading voice perhaps doesn't fully evoke the subtlety sardonic nature of his poetry, but then again maybe reading his work on paper doesn't convey the lived rage behind the work.
March 27, 2019
Powerful collection of poetry. Language that shatters while it builds hope. Must read.
July 8, 2020
Heaven is All Goodbyes is Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Jean Basquiat in poetry. A dream you can't wake up from, like being of Color in amerikkka.
August 22, 2023
Not a fan
February 27, 2024
There is a challenge to reading Eisen-Martin’s poetry. A challenge that I would relate to both his books that I’ve read. How is someone supposed to make a political argument when no one is actually listening to the language. Whether for complaint or advocacy, no one’s taking the time to listen. When I read Eisen-Martin’s first book I could feel the poet’s imposition when narratives had been projected onto him, and no one stopped to wonder whether those were his narratives or not. The poems registered an impotence to the language of protest, and a potency to the language of cultural narrative.
This second book centers on the poet, especially what it means for him to live in a city. But “the poet” in this book feels like many different people. It would be interesting to juxtapose this book to Joshua Bennett’s Owed, that feels more like autobiography, and relationship with a city that feels both constructive and destructive. Bennett owns his life in his city and still sees the complications that involves (ie writing odes to what’s owed him).
In Eisen-Martin, the city is primarily destructive. Or whatever you would describe a life lived among what feels like twisted metal, where the poems push your reading into the twist. Because living in the city is about always being in the middle of a story, and there’s no clear way to explain what began the story, or trying to explain what began the story is really just part of the middle of the story. Here’s the given: the city is whatever a city is when it feels like a prison. Like all the voices in a city with one intention, talking to you in a certain tone of voice, so you know you’re there, and no one is anything but there. And if Eisen-Martin’s style is confusing, or jagged, or displacement leading to displacement, that’s what it sounds like all those voices are telling you. Like in the beginning of Richard Wright’s Native Son by Wright, Richard (2008) Paperback, how the novel traps you in the city Bigger lives in, which isn’t just the city, its building and streets, it’s the construction that keeps a Black man in this particular place. Living this particular way. And, as Wright will make clear, how the Crime & Punishment (06) by Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mass Market Paperback (2006) in Bigger’s position will be very different from its Russian version.
In Eisen-Martin’s book, though, there isn’t a central figure like this. No “Joshua Bennett” relating stories from his life. No Bigger. And no Raskolnikov. The poems rely on other voices, italicized asides, and commentary that is purposely disconnected or tenuously connected from one comment to the next. Think The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, but rather than the city as a blur of impressions that create subjective fissures in the citizen, think a city with a longstanding strategy to keep certain people in one place. And then everything in the city is basically voices in that script. Because it’s how they all speak of a similar position and a similar hopelessness. And it’s disturbing that, however, disconnected all the voices are inflecting on the poem’s occasion, they constitute a consistency. A consistent oppression felt throughout the book. There won’t be escape. And if anyone could locate the beginning of the story that this book marks the middle of, they would see there was never an intention to create an escape. on what this world is. So maybe it’s Gary, Indiana. Maybe it’s parts of San Francisco. Maybe it’s a part of a city you’re familiar with.
This second book centers on the poet, especially what it means for him to live in a city. But “the poet” in this book feels like many different people. It would be interesting to juxtapose this book to Joshua Bennett’s Owed, that feels more like autobiography, and relationship with a city that feels both constructive and destructive. Bennett owns his life in his city and still sees the complications that involves (ie writing odes to what’s owed him).
In Eisen-Martin, the city is primarily destructive. Or whatever you would describe a life lived among what feels like twisted metal, where the poems push your reading into the twist. Because living in the city is about always being in the middle of a story, and there’s no clear way to explain what began the story, or trying to explain what began the story is really just part of the middle of the story. Here’s the given: the city is whatever a city is when it feels like a prison. Like all the voices in a city with one intention, talking to you in a certain tone of voice, so you know you’re there, and no one is anything but there. And if Eisen-Martin’s style is confusing, or jagged, or displacement leading to displacement, that’s what it sounds like all those voices are telling you. Like in the beginning of Richard Wright’s Native Son by Wright, Richard (2008) Paperback, how the novel traps you in the city Bigger lives in, which isn’t just the city, its building and streets, it’s the construction that keeps a Black man in this particular place. Living this particular way. And, as Wright will make clear, how the Crime & Punishment (06) by Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mass Market Paperback (2006) in Bigger’s position will be very different from its Russian version.
In Eisen-Martin’s book, though, there isn’t a central figure like this. No “Joshua Bennett” relating stories from his life. No Bigger. And no Raskolnikov. The poems rely on other voices, italicized asides, and commentary that is purposely disconnected or tenuously connected from one comment to the next. Think The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, but rather than the city as a blur of impressions that create subjective fissures in the citizen, think a city with a longstanding strategy to keep certain people in one place. And then everything in the city is basically voices in that script. Because it’s how they all speak of a similar position and a similar hopelessness. And it’s disturbing that, however, disconnected all the voices are inflecting on the poem’s occasion, they constitute a consistency. A consistent oppression felt throughout the book. There won’t be escape. And if anyone could locate the beginning of the story that this book marks the middle of, they would see there was never an intention to create an escape. on what this world is. So maybe it’s Gary, Indiana. Maybe it’s parts of San Francisco. Maybe it’s a part of a city you’re familiar with.
July 4, 2020
I just keep reading these poems over and over. The City Lights Pocket Poet Series still has the stuff you want and need! I went to celebrate the re-opening of Dog-Eared books in the Castro, knowing that i couldn't browse, only purchase "curbside" - so I had a few titles in mind. But when I saw they had this book, I bought it on an impulse, and I'm glad I did.
There's no way to do justice to a book like this by quoting a line or two, but here's one anyway:
"I did right by the imaginary people that an american winter made
real and then I made imaginary again."
Another good one: "Don't take yourself so serious that your soul falls off"
But don't take my word for it, do yourself a favor and check this book out for yourself.
There's no way to do justice to a book like this by quoting a line or two, but here's one anyway:
"I did right by the imaginary people that an american winter made
real and then I made imaginary again."
Another good one: "Don't take yourself so serious that your soul falls off"
But don't take my word for it, do yourself a favor and check this book out for yourself.
February 5, 2018
some of just a few of the couplets that floored me
"The floorboards were right where
the bottle said they would be"
"Clocks where the toilet
apparently does not need to be anymore"
"Talking head says, 'Go to sleep children. You will all be police tomorrow.'
We say: No. We will be the poor."
"what fascists are determined to do
does not scare most people"
"The floorboards were right where
the bottle said they would be"
"Clocks where the toilet
apparently does not need to be anymore"
"Talking head says, 'Go to sleep children. You will all be police tomorrow.'
We say: No. We will be the poor."
"what fascists are determined to do
does not scare most people"
February 25, 2023
This book devastated me. I chewed on it for weeks. I’d read a poem and it would get stuck to my insides like hot medicine. I needed time with each line, my mind would jump from one scene or voice to the next as I read it. It’s vivid. It feels like softish sandpaper, I don’t know how else to describe it.
August 11, 2018
Complicated, expressionistic and devastating series of poems that demonstrate the Black Lives Matter movement in a fantastic fashion. Not an easy read but worth it for all to understand the plight of the African-American community
April 12, 2019
Really refreshing to read some Beat poetry written by a POC. One of my favorite passages is the last paragraph:
“—the man was slumped against a billboard
we wondered more about
how a billboard got to the ground
than the holes in his chest—“
“—the man was slumped against a billboard
we wondered more about
how a billboard got to the ground
than the holes in his chest—“
January 19, 2020
Heaven Is All Goodbyes is a map of injustice that rejects the Cartesian plane. Read this book–especially if you're living in San Francisco–and if you get a chance, go hear Eisen-Martin read his work live (or look up his videos online).
February 1, 2021
i didn't understand what the poet was talking about half the time, but i did appreciate the completely unique lines and phrasings, many of which seemed like they had never before written before this book. plus some interesting references to SF.
February 22, 2021
I found these poems unusual and sometimes difficult, both intellectually and emotionally, and also beautiful and tender. They are to be read and reread and considered and moved through. They do not hold your hand or show you the way.
November 25, 2019
I wanted to like this book and I found delight from some individual moments but overall it felt lackluster. Would not recommend
June 9, 2021
I wish I loved this more. Some lines blew me away. But overall, I am not sure this collection is going to sit with me long. Which is too bad. See above: lines that blew me away.
September 13, 2024
"dance moves within murder attempts within dance moves"
January 4, 2025
Tuff but good book of poetry. Skid side of San Francisco represented in gritty truthful view. I grew up around this.
Well written, very dense. I want to read more of this author.
Well written, very dense. I want to read more of this author.
March 13, 2025
need to come back to this one bc there are some poems i didnt quite get but there are so many great lines wow this is like gil scott heron meeting basquiat??
June 25, 2025
This man sees something that is profound, yet profoundly elusive. it's ephemeral, it's almost unreal.
July 5, 2025
This is the most amazing bonkers poetry that I’ve ever read. I picked this book up at City Lights a few years ago when I was in SF for a conference. I wanted to get one of the City Lights books (this is no. 61) but there are so many! I just randomly chose this one based on the cover, to be honest. I’ve been slowly reading it for years now. Literally. This poetry is so dense and interesting and well-written that I find myself just reading the words out loud and marveling at how this guy puts words together. After I’d read about a 3rd of the book, I looked up the poet. He’s well-decorated as he deserves to be. This poetry is amazing. But also confounding, and both furious and sad. Deeply sad. I very much disagree with Nikki Giovanni’s blurb on the back where she said that the poems together “gives us laughter, love, and hope.” To me these are poems that describe the bitterness of being poor, black, and a man in the USA. All those things together but also individually. And then those bitter feelings are put through a funhouse mirror and mixed with a little bit of history and sense of place. I found it heartbreaking and heavy. But completely fucking mind blowing. Kind of scared; kind of in love.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews