Winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series Competition, selected by Cornelius Eady-an exploration in verse of imperial appropriation and Mexican American cultural identity.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Poetry at St. Lawrence University, J. Michael lives in upstate NY.
Praise for Museum of the Americas:
"Diorama-like, this book displays what has been, in American
culture, displayed, and thereby displaced. It is at once a natural
history of American racism and colonialism, utterly devastating in
its cumulative impact, and a gorgeous mash-up of genres and forms:
bold, light, and ruthlessly smart." —Dan Chiasson, The
New Yorker, "The Poetry I was Grateful for in 2018"
“This marvelous, argumentative and curiosity-provoking book is
itself best thought of as a kind of corrective cabinet of wonders,
one whose portraits and specimens complicate the dominant
narratives of imperial conquest and control . . . Martinez’s
approach is as brainy as it is entertaining, as political as it is
personal.” —Kathleen Rooney, The New York Times Book Review
“Masterful . . . Martinez’s poems are dynamic personal doxologies
of Mexican-American tradition and inheritance . . . Ambitious and
historical, Martinez’s book earns praise.” — Nick Ripatrazone, The
Millions
“[A] fascinating hybrid collection that explores how current events
reflect long-held prejudices about Mexicans and people of color.”
—The Washington Post
“A beautiful, personal, well-conceived, and historically
contextualized indictment of empire, the aestheticization of
biopolitics, and the white gaze.” — Publishers Weekly
"[A] showcase for some smoldering linguistic skills and a powerful
argument against racism." —The Santa Barbara Independent
“J. Michael Martinez’s visionary lyricism lands like a dark
amber lightning bolt on the ivory blade of the American poetic
genome, sparking a poesis of radiant mutations that we always
dreamed possible---but wondered if they could ever truly
transpire. With echoes of Pound and Melville, Paz and Borges
and more, he forges a sui generis poetics of mestizo becoming that
ranges from anatomizing pre-Columbian deities to memories of his
Mexican American grandmother’s funeral, with all of the atrocities
and wonders that have passed between. Museum of the Americas
offers a borderless American Genesis story that begins in
Tenochtitlán, rather than Plymouth Rock. It feels like a tale
we’ve been waiting to be told.” — John Phillip Santos
“This is a fascinating, layered collection of poetry that blurs
genre in some really interesting ways. Martinez offers, as the
title suggests, a museum of the Americas, and especially engages
with Mexican migration and its effect on the body. Given the goings
on of the world, this poetry is especially timely. Every piece in
this book offers something beautiful or haunting or illuminating;
every thought, every word, every image is precisely rendered.” —
Roxane Gay
“J. Michael Martinez may call this stunning collection a museum,
but once you enter, it’ll feel more like a dip into a repository of
fun house mirrors; our entwined histories here are pushed, pulled,
elongated, and always reflected straight back, with laser
sharpness, to the reader’s gaze. It is a book perfectly crafted to
meet the complicated days we are living through.” — Cornelius
Eady
"J. Michael Martinez’s poetics is at once direct, critically
incisive, and aesthetically adventurous. This collection is
brimming with the enigma of social agency as manifested through
culture. Museum of the Americas stands as a beacon for how the
impulse towards radical democratic vision and practices can be
tracked by a bold reformatting of historicity that speaks to our
current moment.” — Rodrigo Toscano
"The book’s larger cultural issues will get a lot of attention, and
they should, as they deepen the conversation, but what has stayed
with me most are the very personal poems in this book, about
Martinez and his father and his grandmother, which serve as great
tributes to their lives." — Alex Dueben, The Rumpus
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