“If a stranger comes around, if he’s wise, he will keep to the road and announce his business soon, clearly and loudly, then you’ll see what’s what. You’re not against him, but you’re not automatically for him.”
Erich J. Prince’s Latest Column
Johnny Payne’s Column
Latest Poetry
Essays & Criticism
Latest Interview
Johnny Payne
Johnny Payne is the arts editor at Merion West. Johnny is a poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist. He has worked extensively in Latin American Studies, especially literature under dictatorship and Quechua oral tradition. He directs the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles. He earned his doctorate from Stanford University. Contact Johnny at johnny@merionwest.com.
Author: Johnny Payne
Johnny Payne is the arts editor at Merion West. Johnny is a poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist. He has worked extensively in Latin American Studies, especially literature under dictatorship and Quechua oral tradition. He directs the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles. He earned his doctorate from Stanford University. Contact Johnny at johnny@merionwest.com.
Still in the Holler
The Buster’s Hand: Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s “Rodeo”
“In her exquisitely physical Rodeo, Sunni Brown Wilkinson takes her place among those superb modernists, early and late and post, who recognize the combination of mutability and continuity across poetic epochs that is a key to lyric’s continuing strength and relevance…”
God’s in the Weeds: Daneen Bergland’s “The Goodbye Kit”
“Eve about to be cast out of the Garden kills as the mistress of straight-faced understatement. There is no fury, no rebuke, or if there is, it has not set in yet. Instead, we get rationalizing, looking on the bright side, and philosophical self-doubt.”
Down at the Ecoplex
“Doom is there staring, everywhere/I go, like a brazen coyote/dead center of the road/half-starved so it doesn’t care anymore.”
Sand, Ash, or Mud: Valerie Witte’s “A Rupture in the Interiors”
“As for most poets, [Valerie] Witte’s writing is intensely personal, whatever form it may take. No ‘experimental’ poet could be more candid and direct about her intention of ‘examining in a new way’ matters close to her heart.”
Little Engines of Self: Joy Manesiotis’ “Revoke”
“It is a remarkable feat of poetics to create epic sense out of the most micro of human materials.”
Notes on Kitsch: Janice Harrington’s “Yard Show”
“As witness of this exaltation of the gaudy, the poet reclaims kitsch as a redemptive force, a vital stream of art, when it is mindfully connected to a set of local traditions, the heritage of a group that had to strive hard to find its native expression using the materials at hand.”
How to Read Poetry
“If I have become something of an expert reader of poems, it is in part because long ago, I learned to linger on the surface of things, rather than push past their specifics in order to arrive quickly at instant profundity.”
The Dead Are Difficult: Jenny George’s “After Image”
“The tone of After Image is simultaneously calm and feverish, as the bereaved one moves along a spectrum from numb to utterly passionate, up and down, yet never hysterical, never heaping ashes on her head.”
The Disappearing Sonnet
“Cicadas, dirty oil, dogs, Venus, gloves/clouds, manholes, fled storms, black notes, harmonies/float indiscriminate as my head throbs/then disappear on the next wisp of breeze”
Wrackable as Arguments: Anne-Marie Turza’s “Fugue with Bedbug”
“[Anne-Marie] Turza shows dramatic flair for summoning our attention, that of a town crier or carnival barker who was handed a surprise announcement at the last possible minute, and now must sell its premise before a skeptical gathered audience with all the bravado she can muster.”
“No One Is Ever Really Just One Thing”: Laurel Nakanishi’s “Ashore”
“What stands out in Nakanishi is that she possesses an acute awareness of the root poetic traditions of her native islands and brings them forward with respect while also being influenced, as she herself professes, by poets such as Californian Gary Snyder—whose verse, like hers, is thoroughly immersed in the natural world.”
Scribe in Disguise: Amy Beeder’s “And So Wax Was Made and Also Honey”
“[Amy] Beeder’s nimble adaptiveness and ability to key her lexicon to a wily set of speakers and dramatic personae in And So Wax Was Made and Also Honey are what make this rare book command attention.”
Fierce Lyric in Karla Kelsey’s “Blood Feather”
“Blood Feather stages scenes of both unexpected victory and chronic defeat in the three featured lives, while allowing us to imagine an alternative history for these women, had they been listened to and given latitude to exercise their rightful prerogatives in the culture at large, rather than retreating into conventional expectations of femininity.”
Ekphrasis and Eugene Datta’s “Water and Wave”
“Once the speaker’s psyche and voice are introduced via questions, the photo in a sense begins to dissolve, becoming secondary, important, vital in its own right, but not ultimately defining. Thus the fecund faithlessness of poetry.”