In response to one of my poems on Facebook: I always thought the trick to writing poetry was to pretend you were writing about someone else. Then there are those people who don’t pretend and just do it anyway. Also, I want to design Facebook emojis and sell them, things like “you freakin devastate me,” or “I can’t breathe after reading this,” or “that’s like having P. B. Shelley’s heart that wouldn’t burn sitting on my mantle,” anyhow, thanks for changing my life Dana.
— Peter Ciccariello, author of Imaginal Landscapes
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Calyx Review of ‘Toward What Is Awful’
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On The Spare Room: Remember the first time you pried off the cover of an IBM PS/2, only to discover darkness where the spark should be? Reading Dana Guthrie Martin’s poems will result in the exact opposite feeling. The Spare Room shimmers with intensity, from the quiet chronicle of an everyday moment turned hyperbolic, to a litany organized into its own grid. These are poems of the body that do not divorce the body from the mind, beckoning: “slip your hands :: where they don’t belong.”
— Mary Biddinger, author of Prairie Fever and Saint Monica
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On the poem “Five Cows, Two Calves Found Shot Dead in Pine Valley”: As good as poetry gets. Brilliant line to line and my god the plastered ceiling, the war of material (which is also alive) against flesh and human consciousness…. I just tanked my blood sugar and this is the way back to agreeing to have eyes and someplace to put things in my head again. Macrame it on a pillow then suffocate me with it…. Send it as a letter of protest to all neighborhood associations everywhere.
— Matt Jasper, author of Moth Moon
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I must be careful, but yes, Dana Henry Martin is a freaking model of a muse. I sense collaborating with her may bring out the wild be(a)st of even the most challenging of form(ally) experimental poets. Split the world (wide) open. I stole that Muriel Rukeyser reference. Take care of spines.
— Melody Berning
Also in this section: My Bio, Poetry Collections, and Published Work. Or browse my Selected Poems, Writing, and Visual content.
Dana Henry Martin 