BOOKS
Self-Portrait
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by Brian Johnson
ISBN: 0-9656161-9-3 Saddle-stitched, $5.00 Publication Date: Summer 2000. 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 24 pages (ISSN: 1527-9579, Volume 1, Number 3) PROSE POETRY Individuals: Order directly from Small Press Distribution, 1-800-869-7553 ; or Amazon.com. Bookstores: Order through Small Press Distribution. |
Self-Portrait, by Brian Johnson, is the third in Quale Press’s edition key satch(el)quarterly series of chapbooks of prose poetry. The 20 prose poems of Self-Portrait comprise a tour of a psyche that is alternately hopeful, despairing, restless, nostalgic and grandiose. The portrait that emerges is a combination of autobiography and literary invention. Personal memories mingle with fables, prayers, pastoral lyrics and movie stills to reveal a self with many pasts and many guises. Ranging from childhood fantasies of terrestrial and sexual exploration to adult recognition's of failure, Self-Portrait bears witness to one person’s search for clarity and fulfillment.
“The narrator of one of Johnson’s poems announces, ‘I pray that I continue to love the resemblance of things.’ Indeed, Johnson’s debut collection celebrates his reverence for people and for objects, and for how they mimic each other. He has created a ‘self,’ both personal and universal, that bows before a real world which is constantly verging into a mythological one.”
— Peter Johnson
Torch Lake and Other Poems
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by Brian Johnson
$14.95 paperback Paperback: 88 pages Publisher: Web del Sol Association (November 3, 2008) Language: English ISBN-10: 1934832073 ISBN-13: 978-1934832073 Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.2 x 9 inches Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,176,988 in Books ) Average Customer Review: Be the first to review this item Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,176,988 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) |
THE MOST LYRICAL POEMS that I have read in years. A first collection brought to a nearly translucent state of shine. It moves lithely into the most splenetic of spirits, and delivers a score of unexpected kisses, Pythagorean silences, and glorious uncertainties as if they were all daily occurrences.
- C.D. Wright
TORCH LAKE & OTHER POEMS is the most original and exciting collection given American poetry since Larry Levis’ Elegy was published. There’s more juice, scope, imagination and sheer vitality in this work than in twenty-run-of-the-mill collections. Johnson's metaphors oscillate, the force and drive of his language overwhelms, undermines, and ultimately encourages. All this bathed in a magical realist wildness that somehow proves once more, what Stephen Dedalus understood, that true art must be forged in the smithy of in this case Johnson's soul. - Gray Jacobik
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address - Prof. Brian Johnson
SCSU 501 Crescent Street English Dept. New Haven CT 06511 |
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