Sign in with Facebook
175th out of 206 books
—
52 voters
Heredities: Poems (Walt Whitman Award)
by
J. Michael Martinez (Goodreads Author)
In his Walt Whitman Award-winning first book, J. Michael Martinez re-envisions Latino poetics and its current conceptions of cultural identity. Heredities seeks to speak beyond codified aesthetics and dictating 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 fi...more
Paperback, 96 pages
Published
May 2010
by Louisiana State University Press
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
81)
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...more
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...more
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...more
Hybrid 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
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.
Unusual, mysterious, and challenging articulation of writing.
Apr 24, 2013
Frank Mutua
marked it as to-read
Oct 12, 2012
Kevin Knutson
added it
Aug 13, 2012
J.S.A. Lowe
marked it as to-read
May 06, 2012
and
marked it as to-read
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
J. Michael Martinez was born and raised in Greeley, CO. He is a graduate of the University of Northern Colorado and received an M.F.A. from George Mason University.
His poems have appeared in New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, The Colorado Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others, and the anthology Junta: Avant-Garde Latino/a Writing. He is the recipient of the 2006 Five Fingers Review...more
More about J. Michael Martinez...
His poems have appeared in New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, The Colorado Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others, and the anthology Junta: Avant-Garde Latino/a Writing. He is the recipient of the 2006 Five Fingers Review...more
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
