- Between Narative and Image
Tongo Eisen-Martin
City Lights Publishers
www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100115800
136 Pages; Print, $15.95
"There's a cow's mouth / on the flag," the words immediately struck my ear as so true, not in the manner of factual truth but rather in how they deliver a complex unexpected vivid image weighted with both possible social criticism and emotional significance. In short, the words convey just the sort of thing that is expected of poetry. This was a couple of years ago. I was sitting upstairs having a drink at Vesuvio's across the alley from City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco's North Beach, meeting one of the city's latest native born poets, Tongo Eisen-Martin. Derek Fenner's Bootstrap Press had just published Eisen-Martin's first full collection Someone's Dead Already (2015) and Eisen-Martin had been reciting a few lines from the book.
Fenner became acquainted with Eisen-Marten through mutual work in arts education in under-served East Bay school districts. He was at Vesuvio's that day passing off to the poet the first finished copy of the book. My presence was happenstance. I always go to Vesuvio's whenever in North Beach, after first stopping in at City Lights. I happened to run into Fenner who is a friend of mine and thereby chanced upon meeting Eisen-Martin. Since that day I've had many opportunities to hear him read from his work as he's quickly risen as a popular presence on the local poetry scene. Now with City Lights publishing his second collection Heaven Is All Goodbyes he's well set to be on his way towards ever broader national recognition.
This is a course of development I expect he's well prepared for. Eisen-Martin possesses the natural cool of having street smarts that are never overplayed, never taken for granted on his part. His presence conveys an assured center of stability and calm acceptance of whatever situation he finds himself in. This is reflected in his poems where while acknowledging his capacity for playing the part, whatever part that's called for, he's also quick to provide a reality check(s) that swiftly undercut any sense of pretension: "It's cool to panic for a second / Composure is wasted on your worst enemies." The frankness of tone is complimented by the levity of humor that it is so often accompanied by. There is as well as a marked dexterity for juxtaposition, the poem as presented being a mixed take, caught between narrative and image. "Like old friends we catch up awkwardly / A forgettable blues / He's four cigarettes into his thoughts." Or, as announced here:
Grandmother, why don't you ever talk aboutyour children whothe first world murdered?
Because, son, I haven't run out of knife handles.Hang this one around your neck, so that yourbrothers and sisterswill know what you are
The first white man invented the first flagpole while inspired by the first hole he ever put in a human being
Eisen-Martin's poetry presents a frank and unflinching portrait of the contemporary urban imagination unrelentingly ravaged by social injustice. He serves witness to how prevalent the imbalances of race and power in our society are. That the situation is as inescapable as clouds in the sky, or whatever the view is from where you may be looking: "under my skin, they call a tattoo the sky."
His work as a social activist in education both in the school system as well as the prison system is at one with his work as poet. And for Eisen-Martin these two systems are oftener than not one in the same, "My dear, if it is not a city, it is a prison. / If it has a prison, it is a prison. Not a city." He well understands that poetry provides access to and attests necessary reflection upon social inequities. His own life experience has taught him how the ways of society impact those members who are not among the privileged. That even the...