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Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets
Heredities: Poems
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 politics in order to recognize a territory of "irreducible otherness" where the self's sinew may be "reeved through revelation" and where, finally, one finds "obscurity bonded to light." This stunning collection heralds the arrival of an important new voice in American poetry.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2010
3 people are currently reading
87 people want to read
About the author
J. Michael Martinez
12 books27 followersA Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project, J. Michael Martinez received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets for his first book, "Heredities." "In the Garden of the Bridehouse," is available from the University of Arizona Press.
His third collection, "Museum of the Americas," was selected for the National Poetry Series by Cornelius Eady and is published by Penguin Press.
J. Michael's next work, “Tarta Americana” will be published by Penguin September of 2023. An Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University, he teaches in their MFA program and lives in San Jose.
About his work, Herrera wrote, it "breaks away from four decades of inquiry into cultural identity. Martinez's exhilarating descent into the unspoken—lit by metaphysical investigations, physiological charts, and meta-translations of Hernán Cortés's accounts of his conquests—gives voice to a dismembered continental body buried long ago. This body, though flayed and fractured, rises and sings."
His third collection, "Museum of the Americas," was selected for the National Poetry Series by Cornelius Eady and is published by Penguin Press.
J. Michael's next work, “Tarta Americana” will be published by Penguin September of 2023. An Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University, he teaches in their MFA program and lives in San Jose.
About his work, Herrera wrote, it "breaks away from four decades of inquiry into cultural identity. Martinez's exhilarating descent into the unspoken—lit by metaphysical investigations, physiological charts, and meta-translations of Hernán Cortés's accounts of his conquests—gives voice to a dismembered continental body buried long ago. This body, though flayed and fractured, rises and sings."
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 20, 2024
3.5 - this book suffers from trying to do too much in too small a space, and approach a number of thick, interesting concepts that ought to constitute a hybrid monograph rather than a 70-page poetry collection.
September 8, 2024
Martinez is the visiting poet at GMU this semester so I’ll be exploring a few of his books.
This book is a fascinating examination of how the language of the colonizer fails to account for those in the margins. A powerful reflection on culture, heritage and belonging.
I’m the most impressed by the constant turns in diction, the surreal leaps, and the weaving of myth and imagery through the entire collection.
This book is a fascinating examination of how the language of the colonizer fails to account for those in the margins. A powerful reflection on culture, heritage and belonging.
I’m the most impressed by the constant turns in diction, the surreal leaps, and the weaving of myth and imagery through the entire collection.
October 29, 2013
This book starts for me in the second section, where Martinez begins to engage/inhabit/imitate/manipulate/repurpose/appropriate/enrich/undo pre-Columbian Meso-American myth. This is not the totality of what Martinez is doing in the second and third sections of his book, but it is a major focus of the poems in how it contributes to the voice, image, and rhetorical structures. The poems are lyrical and historical, political and still personal (without being "personal politics"), and Martinez plays with open forms in a way that shows he doesn't lose sight of today's avant garde poetry as he delves into the past of Meso-America.
Where the book falters for me, particularly in the first section, is where Martinez tries to play with critical theory and political philosophy in the poems. As a lover of both contemporary poetry and political philosophy, I didn't find the interruptions of the former by the latter to be pleasing. But wait, let's be clear: this is a political act, where a Chicano poet interrupts the traditional western lyric with arguments regarding the subject, the body, and linguistics. (That is a gross simplification, but it gets at the thrust of what defines the act.) I admire the politics of it, share some of Martinez's tastes in reading material, and I can even find the artistic value of the project--not all art should be pleasing, as many examples in modern music have fortunately taught us. At the same time, without disrepect to all that I can find of value in these poems, I think they are the least successful in the book, and also where Martinez would owe the greatest debt to other poets. His most original work is where he leaves the explicit theory in the white spaces of the page, as I see it.
In any case, I will look forward to seeing more of Martinez's work in the future. Judging by some of the inventive turns he takes in this volume, I expect he will go somewhere unexpected.
A favorite poem: "Our Lady of Guadalupe's Dream and Jade Ruin." Check it.
Where the book falters for me, particularly in the first section, is where Martinez tries to play with critical theory and political philosophy in the poems. As a lover of both contemporary poetry and political philosophy, I didn't find the interruptions of the former by the latter to be pleasing. But wait, let's be clear: this is a political act, where a Chicano poet interrupts the traditional western lyric with arguments regarding the subject, the body, and linguistics. (That is a gross simplification, but it gets at the thrust of what defines the act.) I admire the politics of it, share some of Martinez's tastes in reading material, and I can even find the artistic value of the project--not all art should be pleasing, as many examples in modern music have fortunately taught us. At the same time, without disrepect to all that I can find of value in these poems, I think they are the least successful in the book, and also where Martinez would owe the greatest debt to other poets. His most original work is where he leaves the explicit theory in the white spaces of the page, as I see it.
In any case, I will look forward to seeing more of Martinez's work in the future. Judging by some of the inventive turns he takes in this volume, I expect he will go somewhere unexpected.
A favorite poem: "Our Lady of Guadalupe's Dream and Jade Ruin." Check it.
February 7, 2016
It is perhaps wrong to say that I've read Heredities and more accurate to say that I've regarded the collection. While the book starts out as lyrical prose and poems, it quickly and confidently leaps into a juxtaposition of forms, an explosion of experimental verses, and presentation that is more Art than words.
As a genomic scientist with a passing interest in poetry, Heredities can't be more up my alley, and I'm perhaps biased in liking the book. It hits all the right chords in its topics of interest -- history, race, biology, pain, corporeality and the self. The threads that entwine to give this book its form is myriad, and just like the heredities that form us, it is not always possible to tease out and separate the strands of cause-and-effect; the narratives that give the whole. But if genetics is that endeavor, to explain the logical circuitry and wiring that predicate our being, perhaps we should let poetry fulfill our other inclination -- to be present as we are, not trying to understand but just experiencing and be fine with that.
As a genomic scientist with a passing interest in poetry, Heredities can't be more up my alley, and I'm perhaps biased in liking the book. It hits all the right chords in its topics of interest -- history, race, biology, pain, corporeality and the self. The threads that entwine to give this book its form is myriad, and just like the heredities that form us, it is not always possible to tease out and separate the strands of cause-and-effect; the narratives that give the whole. But if genetics is that endeavor, to explain the logical circuitry and wiring that predicate our being, perhaps we should let poetry fulfill our other inclination -- to be present as we are, not trying to understand but just experiencing and be fine with that.
Read
April 24, 2010Hybrid myth, ritual, folklore, re-animated history. A jaguar's heart in a heron's body (?) :
"A priest, with obsidian knife,
bled ruby jewelry from his penis
onto a mirror of sapphire.
The offering poured
over the lucent powder,
then molded into the shape
of a woman before being eaten."
BOOM BOOM BOOM
"A priest, with obsidian knife,
bled ruby jewelry from his penis
onto a mirror of sapphire.
The offering poured
over the lucent powder,
then molded into the shape
of a woman before being eaten."
BOOM BOOM BOOM
October 2, 2024
I love most of the book. Sections I didn't really get into or enjoy were the shorter prose poems Aporia and Atopos. There were some phrases and elements within these 2 that I liked, but I could've done without them. Alot of this work was quite obscure, but I'm ok with obscure as long as I get the gist of what's going on, there's beautiful language tied in, and it's written intelligently. If that makes sense, haha! Overall I really liked this.
July 26, 2010
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
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
October 30, 2010
Like so much critically admired current poetry, "Heredities" strains a bit too hard to be original, innovative, and difficult. There are poems and lines in Martinez's book that are quite fine. "Heredities" probably deserves a second read, but I still find any book that annotates itself a la Eliot a bit precious.
July 21, 2010
Unusual, mysterious, and challenging articulation of writing.
December 4, 2013
2.5 Stars/ avant-garde poetry is not my cup of tea.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews