Martin Ott has published eight books of poetry and fiction, most recently LESSONS IN CAMOUFLAGE, C&R Press, 2018. His first two poetry collections won the De Novo and Sandeen Prizes. His work has appeared in more than two hundred magazines and fifteen anthologies.

Other poems by Martin Ott in Verse Daily:
December 13, 2018:   "Why We Believe Obvious Untruths" "My father once filmed a stop-action scene..."
October 8, 2018:   "Stranger" "The man emerged from a Starbucks..."
February 1, 2013:   "Syzygy" "The dead have lost their sense of humor...."

Books by Martin Ott:

Other poems on the web by Martin Ott:
"The Destroyer Defends the Destruction of the Cloud Animals"
"The Destroyer Dreams about the Bonfire of the Welcome Mats"
"First Human Embryos 'Edited' in the U.S."
Two poems
Three poems
"Clusters"
Four poems
"Alligators Are Out There Eating Sharks, No Big Deal"
"The Poem That Got Away"
"Mercy"
Three poems

Martin Ott's Website.

Martin Ott on Twitter.

About Fake News Poems:

"William Carlos Williams famously wrote that 'it is difficult to get the news from poems' but poets like Martin Ott keep proving the limits of Williams' vision. In his wildly strange Fake News Poems, Ott chronicles the first year of the Age of Trump that a series of stranger-than-fiction poetic news stories, each of which come to speak to the wider apocalyptic rumblings of a society—and a planet—seeming to come apart at the seams. As we run toward the singularity, sex robots, edited embryos, self-driving cars, spying dolls redefine the Anthropocene, but don't stop us from swaddling guns, or cockroaches from sneaking into brains, or woodpeckers from cracking our car mirrors. We haven't yet seen what we've become. We need poets like Ott to pay attention to the way in which the future is staring us in the face, and waiting for us to wake up."
—Philip Metres

"Poetry has always sought to illuminate the mystery and wonder of the world, and Martin Ott's wonderful Fake News Poems does just that. Set in a time where reality and fact have been challenged, brutalized, and systematically unwound, this book attempts to marvel at the complexities and simplicity of the human experience as we become increasingly unmoored. It's an anchor in unsure times, an achievement we should all applaud and learn from."
—Jared Yates Sexton

"Martin Ott collects clickbait headlines and transmutes them into lyric truths."
—Jesse Walker

"Inside the circuitry of daily brash, bogus American media and administrative onslaught, Martin Ott lassos the ludicrous and navigates deep existential waters, wielding the dreadful truth of personal and political material into lines of poetry that elicit both chuckles and sighs. Lest we forget we are embodied beings with soul, not to mention history and facts that need tending and preservation. For sanity, for survival, and to protest the reduction of meaning to ridiculous, trivial heights. This masterful writer succeeds in smashing rhetorical kitsch to smithereens, making a mighty reconstructed art of the inspected pieces that glitters with vulnerability, wit, and perceptive gravitas page after page. As insightful Ott points out: Love is not hard (and) It is a shelter from lies."
—Michelle Bitting

"Merriam-Webster defines 'news' as 'a report of recent events.' So, can there be such a thing as 'fake news'? We may never know. Political manipulators, radio loudmouths, and fringe lunatics with podcasts tell us what's real and what isn't, and we're more than happy to leave the thinking to them. Websites seduce us with clickbait, and we say, 'Thank you.' Martin Ott, however, is having none of it. In 52 poems, each a response to a genuine headline, he offers us 52 witty, poignant, and cynical commentaries that take on the madness and silliness assaulting us minute after minute. As somebody who spent his career in media relations, I'll tell you what isn't fake: the work in Martin's smart new collection. Take a break from the 24-hour noise machines and spend some time with these poems. They're as incisive as a New York Times op-ed."
—Joel Allegretti