Cut And Paste: Part Two

Much can be learned about heredities, its composition,
its intention, its goals by looking at the Notes at the
end of the book. “Our name shelters a stranger, about
whom we know nothing except that he is ourselves.”
Says an epigraph by Octavio Paz at the start of the book.
Martinez proceeds to describe himself, starting there,
from the unknown. So, where does the ordinary young
man begin the search for himself? Probably not with
H. B. Nicholson’s Topiltzin-Quetzalcoatl: The Once And
Future Lord Of The Toltecs. Certainly not in the bosom
of Hernan Cortez’s Letters From Mexico, or Bishop
Torqumada’s Compilacio De Las Instrucciones Del Oficio
De La Santa Inquiscion, and perhaps not in Miguel
Leon-Portilla’s Aztec Thought And Culture: A Study Of
The Ancient Nahuatl Mind. What Martinez has gleaned
from his studies is quite evident in this collection, but
unfortunately as some wise man once said, “a little
learning is a dangerous thing”, yes, sometimes the devil
is in the details, and it detracts somewhat from the poems,
apparently Martinez did learn from an Aztec angel, from
the ancient and recent Flor y Canto, and seems to have
gone beyond El Quito Sol, but has he pushed poetry beyond
2012? Only time will tell.