Search Results for: Richard Martin

thinking small – micro-words with Richard Martin (unrehearsed)

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Buy the 3rd selection in The White Quartet: Sighting Icarus: Poems by Richard Martin.
Review by deb Ewing

grail in a plain manila envelope from Dick Martin

Poet Richard Martin is connected to me via the constellation Peter Kidd, founder of Igneus Press. I heard the love in Pete’s voice when he told me Dick was coming out to Canyon for a visit. They planned to look over some of his poems for a project. Now there’s a lesson for everyone: even the guru needs another set of eyes.

Cells of Fancy is a rare publication of Peter Kidd’s works. While I’m waiting for The Human Condition to come into being, I started fishing around to see if I could find a copy of Cells for myself. Mr. Martin messaged me via Facebook to say he’d make me a copy. But that’s not why were here, exactly.

hear Sophia Kidd read Peter Kidd’s piece, “The Human Condition”

My envelope of grail included not only a staple-bound copy of Cells of Fancy, but several tiny publications by Richard Martin himself. I am fascinated and inspired.

Democritus Highball is a tiny book of micropoems printed on one carefully-folded letter-size sheet of printed paper, courtesy of Rinky Dink Press. It’s adorable. Fungo Appetite is an Unarmed Chapbook – 24 pages equalling six sheets of paper cut in half.

I reached out to these publishers of Dick’s microbooks in advance of writing this post. Michael of UnarmedJournal wrote back the most heart-wrenching email, both good and bad. He uses proper punctuation but no capital letters.

“i’m not sure what to answer,” he said, “since i’m in a quandary as to the continuation of unarmed…” He mentions COVID, doesn’t exactly call it an obstacle, but we already know, don’t we? It’s been an obstacle beyond explanation. Decades from now, historians will parse it for us.

Michael says of Richard Martin: “i am pleased to hear that you are to give attention to richard, the author of THE essential piece of americana, boink!” I got me a copy of boink! but I haven’t read it yet. It’s busy over here.

debora Ewing reads Rehearsed in Oblivion by Richard Martin. The cat is unrepentant.

I’m inspired. I see two ways to serve the greater good here: We, too, can make tiny books and we can disperse them by mail. Our society is so conditioned to instant response. Let’s bring back the anticipation of real paper envelopes coming in the mail from far-off places.

I’ll wrap up with the words of our Fearless Leader, Dr. Sophia Kidd, from October 2020:

I was talking with Richard Martin over the phone today, and he spoke of decades of collaboration with American small presses. At the end of his narrative, Dick said, “Everyone’s gotta have a church, man. Small press is MY church!” And I thought about how my dad, late publisher of Igneus Press, Peter Kidd, used to speak of small press as a form of tithing. My mind was going click. Click. Click. And my soul is going vroom. Vroom.

Further Reading:

We’d like to announce our latest Igneus title: Sighting Icarus: Poems by Richard Martin. This title is available in our online Igneus Bookstore, along with the first two chapbooks in the White Quartet: Hard Labor and Cosmic Sandbox. #4, Hobo Return, will be out early 2021.

Rinky Dink Press presents ten new poets twice annually in their fantastic tiny earth-friendly format. Submit your work Here. You can purchase Series 5 – ten poets for $10.00, including Democritus Highball – here.

Boink! Lavender Ink – You can purchase the .pdf version. Boink! is also currently available in paperback.

Hobo Return, Poems by Richard Martin (2021)

About the Author

Richard Martin’s most recent work is Hobo Return (Igneus Press, 2021, the fourth in the White Quartet series begun with Igneus founder Peter Kidd in 2018), Chapter and Verse (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021), and Ceremony of the Unknown (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020). Martin is also the author of Goosebumps of Antimatter (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018), Techniques in the Neighborhood of Sleep (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) and the short story collections Altercations in the Quiet Car and Buffoons in the Gene Pool from (Lavender Ink Press/Fell Swoop). Martin is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Poetry. He lives in Boston with his family.
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About the White Quartet series: Hobo Return is the last in a four book chapbook series conceived with late Igneus founder, Peter Kidd. The first in the White Quartet series, Hard Labor, came out in 2019, with Cosmic Sandbox released later that year. Sighting Icarus came out in 2020, with Martin dedicating this third in the quartet In Memoriam to Peter Kidd, a gesture of love and friendship for his fellow poet. The final book in this series, Hobo Return (2021), rounds out the vision of a poet in awe of being in the world.

Book Release: Sighting Icarus, by Richard Martin

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Sighting Icarus: Poems by Richard Martin

We’d like to announce our latest Igneus title: Sighting Icarus: Poems by Richard Martin.

This is book #3 in the White Quartet, a four book series of chapbooks designed by Martin and long time friend and collaborator, the late founder of Igneus Press, Peter Kidd. Martin dedicates this book In Memoriam to Peter Kidd, and we just wish our old publisher were still around to hold this beautiful book of words in the palm of his hands.

This title is available in our online Igneus Bookstore, along with the first two chapbooks in the White Quartet: Hard Labor and Cosmic Sandbox. #4, Hobo Return, will be out early 2021.

Sighting Icarus: Poems by Richard Martin
Sighting Icarus: Poems by Richard Martin

About the White Quartet series: Sighting Icarus is the latest and third in a four book chapbook series designed by the author and late Igneus Publisher, Peter Kidd. The first in the series, Hard Labor, came out in 2019, with Cosmic Sandboxreleased later that year. Richard Martin has dedicated Sighting Icarus “In Memoriam Peter Kidd,” a moving gesture in nod to decades of love and friendship. The final book in this series, Hobo Return, will be published with Igneus in early 2021. 

About the Author: In addition to the White Quartet series, Richard Martin has also published Strip Meditation (2009) with Igneus Press. Other Martin titles include: Ceremony of the Unknown (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020), Dream of Long Headdresses: Poems from a Thousand Hospitals (Signpost Press, 1988), White Man Appears on Southern California Beach (Bottom Fish Press, 1991); Modulations (Asylum Arts, 1998); Marks (Asylum Arts, 2002); boink! (Lavender Ink, 2005), Sideways (Obscure Publications, 2004),  Altercations in the Quiet Car (Lavender Ink /Fell Swoop, 2010), Under the Sky of No Complaint (Lavender Ink /Fell Swoop, 2013) Fungo Appetite (unarmed chapbooks, 2014), Buffoons in the Gene Pool (Lavender Ink /Fell Swoop, 2016), and Techniques in the Neighborhood of Sleep (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016). Martin is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Poetry, founder of The Big Horror Poetry Series (Binghamton, New York, 1983-1996) and a retired Boston Public Schools principal. He lives in Boston with his family.

Sighting Icarus: Poems by Richard Martin (2020)

Richard Martin’s most recent work is Hobo Return (Igneus Press, 2021, the fourth in the White Quartet series begun with Igneus founder Peter Kidd in 2018), Chapter and Verse (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021), and Ceremony of the Unknown (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020). Martin is also the author of Goosebumps of Antimatter (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018), Techniques in the Neighborhood of Sleep (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) and the short story collections Altercations in the Quiet Car and Buffoons in the Gene Pool from (Lavender Ink Press/Fell Swoop). Martin is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Poetry. He lives in Boston with his family.
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About the White Quartet series: Hobo Return is the last in a four book chapbook series conceived with late Igneus founder, Peter Kidd. The first in the White Quartet series, Hard Labor, came out in 2019, with Cosmic Sandbox released later that year. Sighting Icarus came out in 2020, with Martin dedicating this third in the quartet In Memoriam to Peter Kidd, a gesture of love and friendship for his fellow poet. The final book in this series, Hobo Return (2021), rounds out the vision of a poet in awe of being in the world.

Richard Martin Review of “Gold Vein Lightning: New & Selected Poems,” by William Kemmett

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Review by Richard Martin

Gold Vein Lightning
New & Selected Poems
William Kemmett
Igneus Press (2020)

www.igneuspress.com

98 pages $15.00

Recently, I decided to shut off and block all sources of corporate media lashing my mind by way of 24-hour news cycles. The information and disinformation simply overloaded the circuits of my mind, body and soul. I began to feel encased in the lead of what was wrong with everything. It wasn’t I was in denial of disasters and the Armageddon of the next moment, and thus, should accept a lead suit without complaint. And I was fully aware of the ironic nightmare possessing America, i.e., everything from rigged political campaigns to the initiation of the Sixth Extinction were said to be hoaxes by the Master of the Hoax, the President of the United States. But like Joyce attempting to wake up from the nightmare of history, I wanted to awaken from the present instalment of it. I hoped for a phenomenal epiphany.

As fortune dictated, I began reading William Kemmett’s latest book, Gold Vein Lightning – New and Selected Poems (Igneus Press, 2020). Kemmett wasted no time in melting my lead attire with his electric poems. In the first and title poem of the collection, “Gold Vein Lightning,” he writes:

It’s a fraction
        longer than a crack
                across the sky –
a bolt split a rock
      on the side of the
              hill and turned
lead into gold.
       There are things
               you just know.

Kemmett is a reservoir of knowing things. Like an alchemist who roasted lead with gold to produce spirit and understood “unus mundus” to be the non-differentiated unity of being, Kemmett offers this to brew in Behold Every Creature:

                 The gift of day; 
                  a field of crickets
                 orchestrates one string
                 of many notes.

                Distance punches holes where
                         there are no holes and map
                the sky for Lesser Beings  
                         like myself who can’t sing
                praises to the stars.

From the very first poems in the book, Kemmett’s verbal lightning struck deeply in me. Large sheaths of lead crashed to the floor. As I lugged them to the trash, they were heavy, bulky and awkward. A neighbor, blasting leaves into a purposeless dance with a leaf blower, calmed his machine to ask about the pile of lead in my arms, and had I lost a few pounds. Maybe, the Keto or South Beach Diet had paid the advertised results. I could only respond: “my nation is hungry/for green emeralds and mystical/sapphires, Li Po’s river/of stars.” (“The People’s Poem,” p.17). He shook his head and said: “Now ain’t that the truth.”

Lightning across the sky assumes many shapes and forms, and Kemmett’s poems were no different in terms of presentation on the page. The august beauty of his language and choice of words glowed in appropriate forms to their phrasing. As my body continued to exfoliate my leaden condition, I enjoyed his poems centered on family and humorous insights gleaned from imagination and experience or encounters with others: a lonely woman with a pet spider buys a deluxe model of the bible in the “The Bible Salesman”; a bather’s hasty escort from an ocean beach after offering a young sun worshipper a sardine: “Sardines! I shout back/through a hail of rocks and beer bottles.” (“Sardines,” p.31); and a trip to Home Depot in “Imagining the Worse”:

                 So, it’s come to this –
                 not until the light
                 through the garden section
                 at Home Depot do I notice
                 I’m wearing mismatched sandals.

                                  Am I fugitive
                                  from one of the nursing homes
                                  in Florida?

Throughout the collection, I was engrossed by the way Kemmett’s poems were stewards of the earth with their close observation, grace, magic, mysticism and wisdom as in “Citrix X Paradisi”:

                      I’m in a state of grace:
                               the lime tree I planted has
                      decided to root and defy
                               the citrus canker that preys
                      on bad grafting.

The gold vein lightning of William Kemmett’s poetry demolished my encasement in lead and suspended the “canker” of the present moment in history. This is an outstanding achievement, and especially relevant for anyone who happens to be a man or woman in a grey, lead suit within a grey, leaden culture. Kemmett sings through his poetry the world is immediately and always before our senses and intellect. It is there as pulse, energy and uncompromising openness. It is forever new and mysterious and cannot be reduced to sound bits and pointless partisanship. The transcendent world – in being there – inhibits us, waiting for us to witness it. Gold Vein Lighting – New and Selected Poems offers a way.

Please note: I would be remiss in not applauding the clean and refreshing design of Igneus Press books under the guidance of publisher, Peter Kidd, a lightning force in his own right. Graphic Details of Portsmouth, New Hampshire and S. Stephanie designed Gold Vein Lighting – New and Selected Poems for Igneus Press. Their design reflects the authenticity of William Kemmett’s poetry. The maroon cover with gold lettering is elegant and foreshadows the lightning strikes to come.

Richard Martin writes poetry and fiction. His forthcoming book, Ceremony of the Unknown (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020) will be available in the spring. His latest chapbook from Igneus Press is Cosmic Sandbox.

Cosmic Sandbox, Poems by Richard Martin (2020)

Richard Martin’s most recent work is Hobo Return (Igneus Press, 2021, the fourth in the White Quartet series begun with Igneus founder Peter Kidd in 2018), Chapter and Verse (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021), and Ceremony of the Unknown (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020). Martin is also the author of Goosebumps of Antimatter (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018), Techniques in the Neighborhood of Sleep (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) and the short story collections Altercations in the Quiet Car and Buffoons in the Gene Pool from (Lavender Ink Press/Fell Swoop). Martin is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Poetry. He lives in Boston with his family.
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About the White Quartet series: Hobo Return is the last in a four book chapbook series conceived with late Igneus founder, Peter Kidd. The first in the White Quartet series, Hard Labor, came out in 2019, with Cosmic Sandbox released later that year. Sighting Icarus came out in 2020, with Martin dedicating this third in the quartet In Memoriam to Peter Kidd, a gesture of love and friendship for his fellow poet. The final book in this series, Hobo Return (2021), rounds out the vision of a poet in awe of being in the world.

 

Goosebumps of Antimatter, by Richard Martin: Review by Karen Corinne Herceg

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Essential Provocations    Richard Martin’s Goosebumps of Antimatter: Review by Karen Corinne Herceg

Essential Provocations

GOOSEBUMPS OF ANTIMATTER
Richard Martin
Spuyten Duyvil Press
www.spuytenduyvil.net
592 Pages; Print, $60.00

A few years ago, I had the privilege of reviewing Richard Martin’s poetry book, Techniques in the Neighborhood of Sleep (2016), for ABR. I thought that was a daunting task, until I took ownership of a copy of his latest opus, Goosebumps of Antimatter, a compilation of his writing in various genres. These include heteronyms that serve as his aliases (Duck Martian, Ant McGoogle, Al Pants and Dik Tater), poems, stories, interviews, and general ruminations, as well as sections devoted to visual artists Thomas Haines and James De Crescentis, two very different painters whose divergent styles complement Martin’s diverse writing quite nicely. It is a testament to both Martin and his publisher, Tod Thilleman of Spuyten Duyvil Press, for having the insight and magnanimity to undertake such an endeavor and to reference and include other artists they respect. As anyone familiar with a small press will understand, it is no small burden to reproduce artwork in color while keeping a constant eye on the bottom line. In addition, Martin’s tome is extensive at nearly six hundred pages, is divided into three books, and includes reader’s notes and appendices that offer further elucidation of the materials, a testament to Martin’s vast range of research and knowledge in bringing this work to fruition. While the scope and ambition of the book might put some readers off, they will be doing themselves a disservice if they miss this important work.

Book I, “Invent Purpose,” delivers a mix of Martin’s verse and prose. From the sharp, divergent imagery of “Fluke of Insolvency,” a poem that contrasts the meaning of capitalist greed against intrinsic value, to the profound, penetrating, gritty yet hilarious prose of “Page Four,” we are at once entertained and educated. Book 2 continues his ruminations under the title “Heteronym Interruptus,” whereby his aliases take even greater liberties with their views on a variety of subjects in Martin’s inimitable and hilarious style. “Pipeline Interviews” in Book 3 gives us further insights into Martin’s background and literary impetus as he interacts in question and answer formats, reminiscences, and digressions with other poets and artists. Those interactions not only shed light on Martin’s work, thoughts, and inspirations, but they highlight the importance of working with other artists in a community that feeds our own ideas and replenishes the pool of creativity.

At once retrospective and foreshadowing, Martin offers us a crystal ball of affirmations and warnings based on a lifetime of experience that are often predictive in discerning the current state of human affairs and their potential future repercussions. This is no more blatantly clear than in “Profit Sonnet,” the singular, repetitious line that repeats and comprises the entire poem, “They’re laughing it up in the boardroom.” Martin’s continuous, nuanced humor underscores every weighty and critical issue, not only from current events but of the human condition. From the very first sentence of his introduction the reader is forewarned that this is no ordinary reading experience. Tongue in cheek, and an expert hand on the keyboard, Martin does not so much invite us as to challenge us to continue exploring the outpourings of one of the most original, contemporary minds writing today. How often does one get to laugh out loud almost continuously while reading really good literature? It’s like stand up for the thoughtful and discerning mind. Through his humor, he ponders what writers go through to sustain their sanity when trying to develop a readership, get published, and often speak unwelcome truths. He employs a vast variety of genres, allowing both form and substance to unify and underscore his points.

There are moments of inspiration in hilarious stories of youthful drunken escapades, drug-induced hallucinatory experiences, and even being hit upon the head by acorns that produce illuminating epiphanies. In these moments of serendipitous enlightenment, he states he is “free of gravity.” This also describes Martin’s writing. There’s no sense that his work is encumbered by traditional structures or prescribed modes of thought. His intelligent…

(This partial review by Karen Corinne Herceg has been reblogged 9.16.19 from Project Muse:
Originally Published in 
American Book Review)

Citation: Herceg, Karen Corinne. “Essential Provocations.” American Book Review, vol. 40 no. 4, 2019, pp. 18-19. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/abr.2019.0060

Hard Labor, Poems by Richard Martin (Jan 2019)

Richard Martin’s most recent work is Hobo Return (Igneus Press, 2021, the fourth in the White Quartet series begun with Igneus founder Peter Kidd in 2018), Chapter and Verse (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021), and Ceremony of the Unknown (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020). Martin is also the author of Goosebumps of Antimatter (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018), Techniques in the Neighborhood of Sleep (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) and the short story collections Altercations in the Quiet Car and Buffoons in the Gene Pool from (Lavender Ink Press/Fell Swoop). Martin is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Poetry. He lives in Boston with his family.
.
About the White Quartet series: Hobo Return is the last in a four book chapbook series conceived with late Igneus founder, Peter Kidd. The first in the White Quartet series, Hard Labor, came out in 2019, with Cosmic Sandbox released later that year. Sighting Icarus came out in 2020, with Martin dedicating this third in the quartet In Memoriam to Peter Kidd, a gesture of love and friendship for his fellow poet. The final book in this series, Hobo Return (2021), rounds out the vision of a poet in awe of being in the world.