Martin Cossio is a first-generation Mexican American from San Bernardino, California. He won Golden Triangle’s 2021 international haiku contest and hopes to one day win teacher of the year and maybe an amateur bout or two. He lives in his hometown with his xolo, Squintly.
Instagram: shadow_boxer.aka.professor
PRAISE:
“This is an electric, confident, compelling debut from a poet who has lived and learned, and puts that knowledge and experience into poetry. Martin Cossio’s poems are smart and skilled, full of force and tragedy and humor and real life. They are exciting and dangerous as life itself.”
–Matthew Zapruder, author of I Love Hearing Your Dreams and Story of a Poem
“Martin Cossio works the heavy bag foregoing caution to shadowbox with himself. Weaving prose poems with tales of the tape, Cossio excavates self-actualization and the American Dream ‘rocking bling like boxers out the ring.’ These poems sing self-respect and transcendence long after 15 rounds are over. You might see stars after Cossio’s bars!”
–Mike Sonksen, author of Letters To My City
“‘I was winning the fight no one thought I’d survive,’ Martin Cossio writes in this profoundly intimate and deftly lyric collection. In Shadow Boxer, Cossio isn’t fighting for his life. The poet is fighting with his life. The self in shadow, the faceless dark shape cast upon the wall when too much light bears down. It is through these visceral, vulnerable encounters on the page, Cossio’s shadow finds its face. These are disciplined poems, with regimented heartbeats and musculatures I can only describe as masculine. The honesty of these poems is their entrypoint. Even what’s brutal is beautiful in Martin Cossio’s hands.”
–Jill Alexander Essbaum, author of Would-Land and Hausfrau
Sara J Grimes –
This book is a phenomenal fighting machine. A literary punch to the gut. An intense read worth savoring. I believe firmly everyone should read this book cover to cover. The author is a lean, raw, and dedicated teacher-boxer who deserves the high praise this book garners.
Andréa Ferrell Gannon –
What a compelling collection. It uses boxing as both lived experience and metaphor. It’s an exploration of discipline, addiction, teaching, recovery, identity–and the many ways we learn to fight (with others, with ourselves…).
“Shadowboxing” is just one that stays with me for its physical intensity, echoing the cycles that trap us as drinkers and as people simply fighting to survive. I also especially loved “Spring Cleaning” and the remarkable tempo of “Wilder vs. Fury 3.” So many punchy endings throughout, like “During Physical Therapy.”
There’s a wonderful balance of formal control and vulnerability here that Shadow Boxer a debut that I highly recommend.