Poetry by Chris Martin
March 15, 2011 • 6 x 8.9 • 138 pages • 978-1-56689-259-9
Blending Frank O’Hara’s keen eye and Jeff Tweedy’s heartache, this collection celebrates urban America, in its bustling, maddening glory.
By cataloging the movements and moments of a constantly shifting city, Martin’s poems posit a metropolis that is always already dancing and where no one dances alone. Part philosophy and part song, this dynamic collection moves us to “never / stop moving . . . to always go / sincere in the blur.” An intimate, atmospheric distillation of how “one wakes only / to this false peace / with the voice / of a weatherman,” Becoming Weather confronts the comforts and hierarchies that make us complacent.
About the Author
Chris Martin is the author of The Falling Down Dance (Coffee House, 2015), Becoming Weather (Coffee House, 2011), and American Music (Copper Canyon, 2007) chosen by C. D. Wright for the Hayden Carruth Award. He’s been a writer-in-residence at the Minnesota History Center’s Gale Library, a Bartos Fellow at United World College, and a reader-in-residence at the South Minneapolis Society Library, where he now helps edit the expandable publishing platform Society. In 2015 he co-founded Unrestricted Interest, a consultancy and writing program dedicated to transforming the lives of autistic writers. He also teaches at The Loft Literary Center and is a visiting assistant professor at Carleton College.