“It is a remarkable feat of poetics to create epic sense out of the most micro of human materials.”
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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.
Tag: Johnny Column
Little Engines of Self: Joy Manesiotis’ “Revoke”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
A Different Kind of Knowledge: Matthew Zapruder’s “I Love Hearing Your Dreams”
“The combination of dread and cheer these reveries bring about could accurately be called the optimist’s nightmare. The poet-speaker holds compassion as the stalk of a dandelion holds juice, hidden yet keeping the flower active and aloft through sheer tensile strength.”
Poems Without a Passport: Solmaz Sharif’s “Customs”
“Sharif’s style throughout Customs is neither bland nor baroque. It has the directness of what one overhears while waiting in line to cross on foot an international border or passing through immigration at an airport. It is a stylization of how people talk in such circumstances.”
Syllabic Fits of Speech: Cedar Sigos’ “All This Time”
“Sigo is a poet of utter seriousness, one who feels strongly about justice, the revindication of Native American identity, the calling out of cruelty and neglect, and many other pressing social matters. But he comes at the task with a meditative indirection, insisting on approaching these realities in a considered and careful manner.”
Lynn Xu’s Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight
“Here reposes the reverie-inducing freedom of Rilke and Proust, where you get to say ‘dreaming’ twice, or a thousand times, and even ‘et cetera’ twice, in case you forgot to fill in the blank with your own lyrical, rapture-adjacent images the first time.”
Kink or Worship or Both: Megan Fernandes’ “I Do Everything I’m Told”
“In invoking (and sometimes tweaking) cherished predecessors, this gently impious collection also helps refurbish form.”
For Whom the Nobel Tolls: Tomas Tranströmer’s “The Blue House”
“The lines, like long, rolling ocean waves on a cold Baltic sea, create their own reasons, their own rhythm, their own understanding. Anaphora is used, as Whitman did, to summon us to the great historical pageant of life, of happenings beyond our immediate knowledge.”
The Creases Between Utterances: Jenny Xie’s “The Rupture Tense”
“Whether [Jenny] Xie’s volume was long in the making or came out in a fiery burst (maybe both, by parts?), it is a work of substance, worthy of its current high reputation.”