Voice Versa

Voice Versa is a powerful collection of more than 200 poems by Martin A. David, ranging from 1959 to 2019. The topics cover a wide scope of human experiences, emotions, and observations.

It is a kaleidoscopic flood of language, thoughts and visions; a writer’s journey from youth to maturity, from the gritty streets of New York, to Mexico, Europe and beyond. Simple visions of nature blend with painful images from a child’s memories of the holocaust. Love poems stand shyly besides flippant and sarcastic poems about breaking up. Again and again we hear our own pain and our own sweet experiences spoken in the poet’s voice, but in words that few of us could conjure up.

Martin A. David is a child of the Beat Generation whose literary horizons were permanently altered by the publication of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" in 1956. David's New York origins echo through the book. In fact, even the title Voice Versa has a deliberate New York joke to it—with voice being the stereotypical New York pronunciation of 'verse' and verse being the New York accent’s word for 'voice'.