Dawn Lundy Martin’s latest poetry collection, Instructions for the Lovers (Nightboat Books, 2024), is an algorithm. A code.
The fire red cover catches my eye. Red as in low wave frequencies. Red as in sex, passion, anger, shame. Red as in ram’s horns. Red as a collage of photos, memorabilia, signs of passion, redemption. Everything about the cover screams nocturnal emission, which is such a carefully choreographed lure in the scheme of love affairs, like intentionally bold on purpose. Or, the energy is big. I love everything about being seduced by this poet. As if under a spell, her words are coming out my mouth.I listen to myself say, I watched a lot of porn. Hear myself say, I drank a lot of whiskey. I feel myself hopping around my living room in the dark, opening deeper to the experience of witnessing, participating, of being led on. As if just playing with myself, or practicing playing as myself, now eagerly reciting her poems. Like tender scenes of addiction from “Perspective is Supposed to Yield Clarity”:
I watched a lot of porn. I drank a lot of whiskey.
I let my body just wander around as if it had no mind, just
body and buzzing—the way vibration can make you hover
above yourself, and the feeling is exalted, and you don’t ask
any questions at all about what life means.
And reflections on a particular time and place in “Silver Lake, February 2020”:
I remember the way California holds itself
distinguished in elemental cacophony. Things just glow. Even
there, a cotton wad filled my mouth, went all glut from
misuse. Hey, firestar, I used to say, come on over here
and let me walk you, and the answer was mostly, yes.
My deepest admiration for Instructions drifts spaciously upward into its highest densities of rebirth. Perhaps like a phoenix, Martin maintains such a commanding presence throughout the book because she has endured the sacrificial fire of being a poet, the necessary self-immolation. As Martin says, “I let my body just wander around as if it had no mind,” and, now bodiless, I do not mind imagining myself on some corner in California, being hailed as a new potential lover, willing and wanting the poet to turn to me and say, Hey, firestar, even as I know most of the command is pointed at the poet herself and her real lovers. Still, I would come. I would let the poet walk me. Poems in the book bearing reflexive names like, “Self Care,” and poems written in a post-confessional grain, like “All of It,” provide further contours of a kinky disaffection with being figured and willfully being reconfigured as another species—a bird, a Boswellia tree, a wild weed.
While reading this collection, I float around a cacophonous chamber of queer love, sexuality, sensuality, and long-term polyamory. I was ethically polyamorous for seventeen years, so there is an aspect of my being that is attuned to the rhythm of loving many while maintaining deep commitment. I adore the moments in this book borne in textual communion with Martin’s actual human companions, Stephanie K. Hopkins and Dana Bishop-Root, the “D + D” poems, and the gorgeous closing poem, “D + S On Lovers” a surrealist game, question-and-answer poem, when asked of the possibility of lover as distraction says:
No, the ideal lover
is a collaborator in
this, and offers the
possibility of
expanding even more
into the physical-
etheric bliss place,
grounding and
opening at the same
time.
This sexy book exudes tremendous regard, companionship, contemplation, vulnerability, trust, and years and years of experience loving and being loved. What I respect most about Martin’s work exceeds any contrived image of romantic or even sexual bliss. I admire how Martin reaches divinity, those highest registers of love made possible only after surrendering to the abyss, facing legacy pain, burning it up, and releasing it. Perhaps the sort of ascendance that is only possible in queer love, or love that is spacious enough to allow many lovers at the table.
Instructions for the Lovers belongs to lyric and language, was born from language and lyric. Since her debut, A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering, and in her other books, Martin is always singing of a primary commitment to Self, its shadows, and its dissolution.
