7Poetry. African American Studies. Eisen-Martin's syntax lands somewhere between Sphinx and Thelonious...through poem he makes spare, efficient, wild-eyed jazz...rubs mud and accountability into the pores of the zeros and ones in the glass and steel city. Throughout SOMEONE'S DEAD ALREADY, I return to the wonder of the writer's economy of language, how deftly the words infuse their amulet casings with blood temperature at the edge of boiling. This work is as hungry as revolution, a necessary, deadly still in these shifting times...--Marc Bamuthi Joseph