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My Kill Adore Him

by Paul Martínez Pompa, Martin Espada (Introduction)

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 17 ratings · 3 reviews

"Like the poet's native Chicago, even when violent or troubling, Paul Martinez Pompa's poems risk beauty. His work possesses a fluidity that appears both effortless and well earned. His is a Chicago Renaissance of one--Gwendolyn Brooks's Bronzeville and Carl Sandburg's 'city of big shoulders' becoming a 'city of broken lovers' and 'an entire city in your ears' in Martinez...more "Like the poet's native Chicago, even when violent or troubling, Paul Martinez Pompa's poems risk beauty. His work possesses a fluidity that appears both effortless and well earned. His is a Chicago Renaissance of one--Gwendolyn Brooks's Bronzeville and Carl Sandburg's 'city of big shoulders' becoming a 'city of broken lovers' and 'an entire city in your ears' in Martinez Pompa's capable hands. Playful and political and passionate, the poems in My Kill Adore Him mark an important debut, one you'll surely adore." --Kevin Young, author of Dear Darkness and For the Confederate Dead

"This is an important book if we care about the lives of men, day-laborers, immigrants, factory workers and those on the urban fringe who don't get a fair shake. And this is an important book if we don't. Paul Martinez Pompa knows how to write; these poems vividly evoke people and lives that urge us toward awareness and honesty and compassion. Poetry can do no better than this." --Valerie Martinez, author of Each and Her and Absence, Luminescent.

"Paul Martinez Pompa deconstructs with a deft sword. Straddling literary strategies, no supposition nor paradigm is safe. He slays the stereotypic dragons within as well as without, putting popular culture, elegy, nightmare, personal narrative, identity and gender politics in the same hat, and drawing from the source, Pompa plays a poetic hand for keeps. Every turn of trope is more delightful than the last--a breakaway collection from an exciting new writer." --Lorna Dee Cervantes, author of Drive: The First Quartet

"This is one tough, smart poet. The poems of Paul Martinez Pompa are gritty and visceral, but never cross the line into sensationalism. They are poems that vividly evoke the urban world, especially Chicago, without ever lapsing into urban cliche. They are poems that seek justice for the Latino community without ever resorting to the overheated language that all too often consigns poetry of social conscience to oblivion." --Martin Espada, 2008 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize judge

My Kill Adore Him is a collection of poems from Andres Montoya Poetry Prize-winner Paul Martinez Pompa. With a unique, independent voice, Martinez Pompa interrogates masculinity, race, language, consumerism, and cultural identity in poems that honor los olvidados, the forgotten ones, who range from the usual suspects brutalized by police to factory workers poisoned by their environment, from the victim of a homophobic beating in the boys' bathroom to the body of Juan Doe at the Cook County Coroner's Office. Some of the poems rely on somber, at times brutal, imagery to articulate a political stance while others use sarcasm and irony to deconstruct political stances themselves.(less)

Paperback, 80 pages

Published September 30th 2009 by University of Notre Dame Press

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Dec 17, 2009 Aaron Michael Morales rated it 5 of 5 stars

From my review in MultiCultural Review:

In his breathtaking debut poetry collection, My Kill Adore Him (2008 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize winner), Paul Martínez Pompa bursts onto the contemporary Latino scene with literary guns ablaze. Pompa is precisely what we need right now: a brave poet just as critical of himself as he is of others. Within the pages of this clever and brutally honest text lie the words of an old soul—who just happens to be a young poet. Pompa’s youth and aged wisdom coexist i...more From my review in MultiCultural Review:

In his breathtaking debut poetry collection, My Kill Adore Him (2008 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize winner), Paul Martínez Pompa bursts onto the contemporary Latino scene with literary guns ablaze. Pompa is precisely what we need right now: a brave poet just as critical of himself as he is of others. Within the pages of this clever and brutally honest text lie the words of an old soul—who just happens to be a young poet. Pompa’s youth and aged wisdom coexist in each and every poem, resulting in a fresh, yet deadly serious new voice that is not to be trifled with. No topic ducks his scathing critiques. In fact, Pompa’s deft handling of language makes subjects such as day laborers, hit-and-run victims, those beaten by police and terrorized by neighborhood thugs—all set against the gritty backdrop of Chicago’s streets—the stuff of serious contemplation. And yet he manages two miraculous feats: he neither sensationalizes horrific images such as immigrants locked in the back of a semi truck and left for dead, nor does he trivialize what it means to be a poet seriously attempting to contribute to a political dialogue while American soldiers are dying overseas in two wars.

Pompa’s most impressive skill is how he steers clear of tired Latino tropes—the abuelita or tortilla poems that bog down the collections of so much young Latino writing. In fact, he skillfully addresses this phenomenon by having his abuela, who he admits to calling “grandma,” tiring herself out with her tendency to “flip the factory fresh / El Milagros” or “knead the buttons / on the telephone, order me food / from Pizza Hut.” There is no comál here. No sarape weaving. Pompa upends the commodification of Latinos and Spanish masterfully in the collection’s most humorous poem, “Commercial Break.” The poetry here drips with equal parts humor, rage, disgust, and humility. Take “Amputee Etcetera,” a brutal satire that ponders the atrocities of war: “Nothing cuter / than a war amputee,” writes Pompa, in an obvious reference to our tendency to simultaneously praise and pander to war heroes. Yet in that same poem Pompa lowers the same accusing finger toward the mirror, in one of the collection’s most thought-provoking and disconcerting stanzas: “Nothing truer / than a poet who resists / on paper. Admire his nerve / to condemn from a safe / distance, where he can / keep his shoes / and his conscience / perfectly clean.”

My Kill Adore Him is a desperately needed wake-up call, a punch in the face with a fine set of literary brass knuckles. Highly recommended reading for anyone on the look out for what comes next in Latino poetry.
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Nov 08, 2009 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Paul Martinez Pompa's first collection of poetry, My Kill Adore Him, is brutal. It's brutal because it's violent. It's brutal because it's graphic. But mostly, it's brutal because it's brilliant. Set against the city backdrop of Chicago, PMP's work takes us to a boy's bathroom, to a fifth grade classroom where a lonely persona is called a "Stupid Meck-sah-kin," to a poetry reading at a suburban-strip-mall enterprise called The Cafe Tamale. In PMP's world, summer is Chicago "smothers the city lik...more

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Aug 31, 2009 Barbara rated it 4 of 5 stars

My review at the Poetry Foundation blog:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harri...

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About Paul Martínez Pompa

Paul Martínez Pompa earned degrees from the University of Chicago and Indiana University, where he served as a poetry editor Indiana Review. His chapbook Pepper Spray was published by Momotombo Press in 2006. Pompa's My Kill Adore Him was selected by Martín Espada as the winner of the 2008 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. He currently lives in Chicago and Triton College in River Grove, Illinois.

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