Transcript: Poems on Air, Episode 29 - J. Michael Martinez

[Music intro]

LYNNE THOMPSON: Hello! My name is Lynne Thompson, Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles and I’m so happy to welcome listeners to this installment of Poems on Air, a podcast supported by the Los Angeles Public Library. Every week, I’ll present the work of poets I admire, poets who you should know, and poets who have made a substantial and inimitable contribution to the art and craft of poetry.

LYNNE THOMPSON: Concluding our celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, the spotlight turns to J. Michael Martinez. Martinez is a writer, artist, teacher and musician and the Poetry Editor of the No-emi Press and winner of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets for his first poetry collection, heredities, from which today’s poem is taken.

LYNNE THOMPSON: Today’s poem is "Portrait of an Iris" by J. Michael Martinez.

Portrait of an Iris

You are porcelain pretty one little word cup shaped tracing seasons still holding to branches when the eye is an hour in autumn beneath rimmed tuning the iris focuses its petals in the reproduction of forms air flowering into light what light will acknowledge scattering what Gods reside in promise you are a human event growth air hibiscus artery seabird shellfish unstuck song the raw materials necessary to crea-tion in you the enduring desire to shape in hierarchy the intimate authority of paradise you must step away from this to know this earth

LYNNE THOMPSON: The Los Angeles Poet Laureate was created as a joint program between the City’s Depart-ment of Cultural Affairs and the Los Angeles Public Library and this podcast will be available on the Library’s website. In the future, episodes will be available on iTunes, Google, and Spotify. Thanks for listening!

[Music outro]

Back to Poems on Air: Episode 29

DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a certified or verbatim transcript, but rather represents only the context of the class or meeting, subject to the inherent limitations of real-time captioning. The primary focus of real-time captioning is general communication access and as such this document is not suitable, acceptable, nor is it intended for use in any type of legal proceeding. Transcript provided by the author.

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