In his second collection of poetry, David Anthony Martin uses the mirror of nature and the lens of experience to reveal the depths of the experience of life. His poetry illuminates the beauty of the world and reflects an abiding affection for family, nature, and language itself. Martin's personality shines in every phrase and image, and his poetry dances between ecstatic joy and monastic reverence. In telling his stories he reveals a thread of contemporary contemplation and a continuing exploration of the interior landscapes of life and love, feelings and fears, of growing up and growing together.
"Thoreau, Cid Corman, Lorine Niedecker, Whalen & Snyder, Sam Hamill and now David Martin, a wilderness walker returning as the missing lynx in the lineage of nature based poetry heartbeating it's way into our gorges & forests" Mike Parker, author of "Don't Fall Off The Mountain," "Wallflower Sutra" and "Walking on Water in a Razorblade Breeze."
Many of these poems to function as mini-meditations where the inner world and outer worlds become interchangeable mirrors reflecting each other, in others they each become lenses through which to deeper examine the other.
"Deepening the Map " shows a reverence for the natural world that verges on sacred relationship; a relationship which inspires the poets sense of connection and meaning. Martin explores deeper territory and shows us the interconnectedness; the subtle web between all things in the increasingly complex relationship between humankind and nature.
As the title poem denotes how we see the world can make all the difference, and these poems are keys to doors of perception offering a sense of the wholeness of the world. These doors, or gateless gates, open into a world dominated by nature, especially by animals in language that explores themes which personal and universal, mythic and elemental. These poems impart emotion in a quiet, thoughtful and conversational manner, as though one were leafing through an album of a friend.
It has been said that Martin is equally at home writing acorn-tight three line poems as well as the sprawling streams of forty-liners, and in Deepening the Map he offers us more of both. He balances the seemingly simple, but powerful and thought provoking "h ear t" with the undeniable, urgent romanticism of "vessels."
Regardless of poem size or structure, prevailing throughout is an excellent eye and ear for detail and a finger on the pulse of the heart of the matter at hand. These are poems to read and re-read, poems that transport the reader into another world that is actually our world; as William Butler Yeats said, "There is another world, but it is inside this one."
"David Anthony Martin is a nature poet the way Frank O'Hara was a city poet. He has paid attention, assimilated the beauty and mystery of his surroundings, and let it color his poetry in delicate ways." Corey Mesler, author of "Before the Great Troubling, Following Richard Brautigan " and "Notes Toward the Story and Other Stories."
"Your eyes, eyes of a bard." Janine Pommy Vega, author of "The Green Piano, Tracking The Serpent" and " Mad Dogs of Trieste"
"" Deepening the Map" is a collection that eloquently takes the reader from mountain peaks, to the depths of canyons, the limitlessness of open fields, but ultimately awakens our humanity. And the threats our humanity has on nature. This is a collection of work that will leave beautiful sketches in the mind while etching compassion in the heart of the reader." Marie Loerzel, author of "Rock the Kasbah: A Memoir of Misadventure"