About A Happy Human Disaster

“Time wishes with the vigor of heartbeats,” Martin Balgach writes in a poem dedicated to Tomaž šalamun, and like šalamun, like all major poetry, A Happy Human Disaster is filled with stunning, often paradoxical language that attempts to at once come to terms with and surpass, even defeat time, and always provides unique perspectives. “I dance through time / like a sloppy ballerina,” he says at one point, and yet “The clouds / are showing me their liver spots,” he says at another point, for beyond his own perspective is a cosmos that both threatens and beckons with its potential “nothingness.”. Beginning with a short history of the self and ending with the self “crawl[ing] into forever / holding my own hand,” there is, in between, the notion that ”every heartbeat is a highway” leading to the hope that “Maybe our aches / aren’t different than our joys / and tomorrow is a fruit.” If so, then we are given a feast here, the fruits of a poet’s meditation that we dare not ignore and indeed must dare to embrace.”

-Richard Jackson

Author of The Heart as Framed: New and Select Poems

About Martin:

Martin Balgach is the author of two poetry collections, A Happy Human Disaster (Main Street Rag, 2025) and Too Much Breath (Main Street Rag, 2014). His writing has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Cream City Review, Fogged Clarity, Rain Taxi, Verse Daily, and Stirring, among other journals. Also a performing singer-songwriter, his music is available on all streaming platforms. Martin lives with his wife and son in Erie, Colorado. Please visit martinbalgach.com to read and hear more.