Bone Map

September 29, 2014
Johnson's National Poetry Series-winning debut collection speaks to us "from a country near ruin,// from a forest lit only by rifle fire," where "the moon// ... rolls through you/ like a great city before a war." These poems are missives from landscapes so isolated they approximate post-apocalypse: ice fields, ravaged woods, the primordial sea. Johnson's landscapes are often empty, save for the single, clear-voiced speaker and, on occasion, wild animals such as the stag that catches "its antlers on the light's belly,/ spilling purple viscera/ everywhere." Surreal and fable-like, this is not a topical collection, and yet these poems are urgently aware that they were born of and into a world in which "Wind deepens the wounds// I leave with my boots. Nothing// is well." When Johnson's "war drones and swarms," her verbs double as nouns. This concern with the loss of integrity endured in a time of war marks a work that is equally preoccupied with the figuring of personal loss: "Your hands fell through meâ/ two lights I almost broke// in half wanting." Johnson's poems, like light, clarify even as they pierce: "Though they cannot be deciphered,/ cannot become lighter,/ all moments will shine/ if you cut them open,/ glisten like entrails in the sun."

November 15, 2014

In this heartfelt, gracefully written collection, winner of the National Poetry series, Johnson makes telling connections while showing us a world inevitably underlain by hurt: a stag rubbing its antlers against a tree to strip them of their velvet also strips the tree of bark, as "someplace in the world// a bomb strips away someone's skin." But in her assured way, Johnson helps us stumble upon truth: "This must be what love is: // a pain so radiant/ it cuts through all others."

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