FALL 2025
REVIEW
It is an awkward time to seize the day, even in a way that demonstrates grace and decorum. Luckily we have the example of Charles Martin, whose career as a poet and translator has been to show that the classical engagement with poetry and experience has remained fresh . . . The pleasures of Martin enfold and are enfolded by an epicurean’s comprehension of life’s brevity and richness . . . The sonnet, the ballade, the chains of rhyme, these ways of plotting a narrative turn up repeatedly in the book, but at the heart, as the title itself promises, is the rubaiyat stanza of Omar Khayyam.
—Mark Jarman, THE HUDSON REVIEW, Autumn 2025
SEPT 2025
New Anthology ORDER HERE
Passages from Friday
FROM THE INTRODUCTION by Editor Sunil Iyengar
“Passages from Friday,” the first entry below, is one of the two best poems that American literature has produced in answer to Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). The other is Elizabeth Bishop’s (1911-1979) “Crusoe in England.” Strictly as narrative, however, and for its innovations in orthography, Martin’s offering is superior. Also admirable is how completely the poet enters into the sensibility of the fictional Native American and transfigures it. But for many readers, the most salient aspect will be Martin’s adeptness at the rhyming quatrains of which the poem is constituted.
NEWS
IN BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2024
Mary Jo Salter, guest editor. David Lehman, series editor
You Summon Me . . . by Charles Martin
(from the quartet of poems entitled The Khayyam Suite)
First published in: The Hudson Review
NEWS
PODCAST
Mark Cirino interviews Charles Martin
Ovid and his Metamorphoses
“The Secret Poet” (Metamorphoses Part 1)
“A Man Half Bull and A Bull Half Man” (Metamorphoses Part 2)
Recently . . .
Sun, May 4 at 2pm
Jefferson Market Library at 425 Sixth Ave, NYC
with John Foy & Jennifer Franklin
CHARLES MARTIN
from The Khayyam Suite
Sun Mar 30 at 1pm
Fifth Sunday Open Mic
465 Exchange St, Geneva, NY
PHOTO by Georgia Popoff
Fri, Mar 14 at 7pm. Hybrid: Live & Online
Downtown Writers Voice, 340 Montgomery St, Syracuse, NY
Series Schedule: WINTER 2025 VISITING AUTHOR READINGS AT THE DWC