My Kill Adore Him

Author: Paul Martínez Pompa

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press (2009)

My Kill Adore Him is a collection of poems from Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize-winner Paul Martínez Pompa. With a unique, independent voice, Martínez Pompa interrogates masculinity, race, language, consumerism, and cultural identity in poems that honor los olvidados, the forgotten ones, who range from the usual suspects brutalized by police to factory workers poisoned by their environment, from the victim of a homophobic beating in the boys’ bathroom to the body of Juan Doe at the Cook County Coroner’s Office. Some of the poems rely on somber, at times brutal, imagery to articulate a political stance while others use sarcasm and irony to deconstruct political stances themselves.

"Like the poet's native Chicago, even when violent or troubling, Paul Martínez Pompa's poems risk beauty. His work possesses a fluidity that appears both effortless and well earned. His is a Chicago Renaissance of one—Gwendolyn Brooks's Bronzeville and Carl Sandburg's 'city of big shoulders' becoming a 'city of broken lovers' and 'an entire city in your ears' in Martínez Pompa's capable hands. Playful and political and passionate, the poems in My Kill Adore Him mark an important debut, one you'll surely adore."

–Kevin Young