In the FPP Interview with David Tomas Martinez, David shares insights into his day to day, how “aesthetics and perfecting skills” are always priorities, be it cooking for his family, be it writing, be it “correct foot placement to stop an inside out dribble and shoot a jump shot efficiently.” Hear Martinez read live at “What Just Happened: Writers Respond to Our American Crises” at 6pm this Sunday, November 10th at Silvana in Harlem. He’ll be joined by Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Max S. Gordon, Nara Milanich, Ed Morales and Sarah Van Arsdale. Silvana is located at 300 W. 116th St near Frederick Douglass Blvd. Admission is free.

You once said “it’s our job to hold on to who we are while the world tries to change us,” that “we assimilate and integrate the forces and the strategies that help us to become better people.” In November 2019, what do you hold on to for fear of loss? Are there forces or strategies you’ve found that help you now?

While change is an inevitable part of life, I gravitate toward that which advocates advantageous outcomes. Revolutionary, right? Not as a coping mechanism but I hope there’s some clarity to the conscious pruning of my behavior through introspection. So I’m still trying to hold onto what has allowed for whatever moderate success I’ve attained. I’m still trying to read, think, and make myself the best version of myself, as I see it. And the “as I see it” part is simultaneously the most important part and most dangerous. Which is what I fear losing most, the balance I have in my life now. If I lose that balance, everything from sobriety to a loss of the desire to read will be affected. Though, that aint nothing new in my life, and sometimes I’ve been balanced, other times out of control, the difference now is that I’ve become better at recognizing why and how I lose balance and correcting it before it becomes too unruly.

You’ve declared that “perfection and beauty were never white [only] aesthetics.” Tell us about perfection and beauty in your life and work these days. 

Aesthetics and perfecting skills are a large part of my life, whether it be tinkering toward accurate diction in poems or the correct foot placement to stop an inside out dribble and shoot a jump shot efficiently. I believe strongly in a devoted life, which means I do a lot of shit. I have a family and do my best to make sure they eat well, so I spend a decent amount of time planning and cooking meals. Plus, I shop for my family so that they stay fly. In the work, well, that’s a long drawn out war against time that I’ll lose, but that’s cool. I’m going to get a hit or two in before I go down for good.

What does it mean, for you, to be a formal poet? Is that something you consider yourself to be?

I’m assuming that you mean not formal as in form or metric poet but formal poet in the sense of considering oneself a poet, being able to make a living or construct your life around poetry. That I am. Mostly because I produce poems, think through language predominantly as a poet. As long as I do that, I’ll consider myself a poet.

David Tomas Martinez is the author of two collections of poetry, Hustle and Post Traumatic Hood Disorder, both from Sarabande Books. Martinez is a Pushcart winner, CantoMundo fellow, a Breadloaf Stanley P. Young Fellow, NEA poetry fellow, and NEA Big Read author. Martinez lives in Brooklyn.