BLOOD ON THE FOG by TONGO EISEN-MARTIN
Reading by Rev. Dr. T.C. Marshall Blood on the Fog by Tongo Eisen-Martin (SF, City Lights, 2021) including interview material, by Dr. T.C. Marshall BOOK LINK Grounded in more than just another poetry scene, the works of San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin have risen from a life of focused activism in resistance against racist state violence. His poetics developed in engagement, and his engagement with language is clearly part of that. To do the work of poetry in this way requires clear objectives but also an openness to the dialectical play of the real world. That play is stripped to its basics in an essay published at proteanmag.com in June, 2020, under the title “Alienation for my Peers”: So what we have is normalized, institutionalized, legislated, and well-armed insanity that solidifies the position of the ruling class. And the only way to deal with this torrential insanity is with clear, sober, well-reasoned, theory-generated, praxis-tem...