Bad Alchemy

Bad Alchemy Synopsis

In this exuberant and distinctive collection, Dionisio Martínez addresses topics as diverse as love, the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, twentieth-century art and music, and the relevance of language in an age of image. Much of Martínez's private iconography comes from the picket-fence California community of his youth, in which large events—from the veneration of pop icons (Jean Harlow, Ed Sullivan) to the Vietnam War—seemed to move in slow motion. As an adult, the poet tries to make sense of what the child could not grasp.