Category:
Poetry
ISBN-10: 1622299841
ISBN-13: 9781622299843
"Crawl into life. Fall out of life. / Pick it up. Keep on walking,” writes Allan Johnston in a poem at the center of his urgent, eloquent new chapbook. The forward motion he advises propels his own language onward through meditations on such disparate topics as smoking and Caravaggio, ice and a road crew as he cadences the contingencies of his title with warmth and wit.
—Sandra Gilbert, recipient of the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry, author of nine poetry collections, including Kissing the Bread. Ghost Volcano, and Aftermath, and co-author of The Madwoman in the Attic
Reading Allan Johnston’s new book of poems, Contingencies, is like navigating the world. His poems are like unfamiliar pathways to a deeply familiar place. He’s a poet of outer nature, of plants and ice and birds, but also of our inner nature and textures that shape the webs of our dreams. His poetry is both a comfort and a barb—his phrasings paint with a thick poetic satisfaction, and yet they also spur the poet and reader to always look closer at what is always and ever pulling away. Ultimately, Johnston’s book explains our inexplicable lives—his poems themselves are both the greenness and silence of which our moments are made.
—Chris Green, poet, author of Résumé and The Sky Over Walgreens
|
