"Winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series Competition, selected by Cornelius Eady--an exploration in verse of imperial appropriation and Mexican American cultural identity The poems in J. Michael Martinez's third collection of poetry circle around how the perceived body comes to be allegorically coded with the transhistorical consequences of an imperial sociopolitical narrative. Engaging eighteenth-century Mexican casta paintings, the morbid lynching...

"This collection of poems is an act of remembrance of a speaker looking back on a community of Mexican-American boys who are grappling with the impulse to assimilate while at the same time trying to create something new for themselves through graffiti"--

From "Portrait of the artist, gaslit" to "Portrait of the artist's ancestors" to "Portrait of the artist reading a newspaper," the poems in Harbinger reflect the many facets of the artistic self as well as the myriad influences and experiences that contribute to that identity. "Portrait of the artist as a young man" has long been the default position, but these poems carve out a different vantage point. Seen through the lens of motherhood, of working...