Post Traumatic Hood Disorder

by David Tomas Martinez

Overview

A searing interrogation of identity, masculinity, and contemporary culture, Post Traumatic Hood Disorder's references range from Icarus to Sir Mix-A-Lot as the speaker assembles a bricolage self-portrait from the fractures of his past. Sliding between scholarly diction and slangy vernacular, Martinez's poems showcase a versatility of language and a wild-hearted poetic energy that is thoughtful, vulnerable, and distinctly American. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781946448101
Publisher:	Sarabande Books
Publication date:	02/19/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	72
File size:	972 KB

About the Author

David Tomas Martinez is a CantoMundo fellow and recipient of a 2017 NEA fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, the Verlaine Poetry Prize, and the Stanley P. Young Fellowship from Breadloaf. His debut collection of poetry, Hustle (2014, Sarabande Books) received the New England Book Festival's prize in poetry, the Devil's Kitchen Reading Award, and $10,000 as honorable mention from the Antonio Cisneros Del Moral Prize. Martinez lives in Brooklyn.

Table of Contents

Hoodies
Tattletale
They Call Him Scarface Because He's Sad
And One
Kama Sleeptra
Love Song
Incidentally
The/ A Train
Aa
Consider Oedipus's Father
Us Vs Them
Winter Night
In Defense of Poetry Voice
And Two
The First Time
Triptych on Ambition
Falling
Vorticism
Foster's Freeze
On Dreaming of My Wife
A Kiss
Drinking Alone
And Three
Sports Analogy
Second Wave
Drawing Water
History Lesson
Symposium
She Passes the Eye Test
Footnoting Biggie Lyrics Like Why Christmas Missed Us
Flight of Love
Art of the Vigilante
And Four
Playing Hangman

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/15/2018
Martinez follows his acclaimed debut, Hustle, with a series of lyrical riffs on American culture that juxtapose literary erudition and swaggering vernacular. Though his canonical touchstones include Robert Frost and Countee Cullen, the ivory tower Martinez constructs is a playfully phallic one, where “to think in grunts and finger points,/ admittedly, is not beyond me.” Self-implicating and parodic of masculine paradigms, these poems reveal an ear honed on poetic tradition and hip-hop (“About suffering they were never wrong,/ the old rappers”) and explore intersections of identity with strikingly musical results: “in this/ skin i am/ more wit/ than man/ and to/ white/ men i/ am no/ whitman.” Martinez largely avoids sweeping rhetorical generalities in his visions of social change; rather, history is embodied in the immediate and personal, as when he writes, “What’s in the attic/ but a vacuum-packed/ subconscious, a few// moldy berries of memory,/ a few buried Members Only/ jackets.” To his sonic dexterity and associative collage Martinez adds a dash of humor tempered by inventive precision: “The late-afternoon light entered/ the living room through the barred/ windows like a boxer through ropes.” Martinez understands that change is microcosmic—that “when// most folks say they want to change the world/ they mean their own.” (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly