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out now from The Word Works
"'Don’t tell it like a story. It will sound too beautiful,' warns the worldly speaker of this assured and expansive debut. These multi-layered lyrics tell stories in abundance—of emperors, peacocks, pre-school drop-offs, falling snow—but their logic is mandala-like, rather than linear. Instead of onward towards meaning, they lead us inward towards mystery. Martinez understands the power of story to transmute experience into knowledge, and the power of poetry to question story's power. Her scope is global, her vision historical, and her voice—by turns tender, sardonic, full of rage or humbled awe—is eloquently contemporary. Here is a book that presses back against reality. 'Not a story, not an image. It is a map.'"
—Suzanne Buffam, author of A Pillow Book and The Irrationalist "Chloe Martinez’s gorgeous new collection Ten Thousand Selves immerses us in a complicated poetic in which the geographies of the self are transposed and transformed by the geographies of the external world. Sometimes those metamorphic spaces are built out of mythologies and atlas pages. Other times, they’re made from city sidewalks, pop songs, and swallowtails. But however they come about, the selves in these beautifully wrought poems are wide-eyed in their wisdoms and whole-hearted in their songs. In poem after poem, they show the myriad possibilities in our extraordinary and surprising lives." —Adrian Matejka, author of Somebody Else Sold the World and Map to the Stars Sample poems here and here. Q&A in Poetry Today, on the Kenyon Review Blog, September 2021. Reviewed by Bill Neumire (with 3 poems from the book) in Verdad, Fall 2021 Order from SPD here. Order a signed copy here (or scan QR code). 
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Winner of the 2019 Backbone Press Chapbook Contest
Honorable Mention, Chapbook Category, Eric Hoffer Awards "This collection is a masterful, intimate and informed work of art about culture itself, and the boundless forms of identity."
—Robert Pinsky, former US Poet Laureate "Attuned to both the insights and the limits of visitation, the poems inside Corner Shrine are ripe with scene and sense as they contemplate the wonders of arrival alongside the worries of transience." —Geffrey Davis, author of Night Angler "To amble through the passages of Corner Shrine is to be guided by a keen and reliable hand through a hall of mirrors, reflecting the mystery, beauty, and hungers of being fully human." —Angela Narciso Torres, author of Blood Orange Sample poems here and here. Reviewed by Naoko Fujimoto in The Inflectionist Review, October 2021. Purchase here. Order a signed copy here (or scan QR code). 
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