Charles Matthew Johnson

Poems and Prose Charles Matthew Johnson

Johnson is stranger to neither frigates nor books, and to question the world with him in verse is to pursue circumference, to fathom the whole in its smallest parts. These are songs of experience; they can crush you into epiphany. But there are in Johnson's poetical peregrinations moments of innocent insouciance too. From the hot streets of Oaxaca at noon to the cold streets of Manhattan at midnight, his poems step out like mirrors; they do not tell us where to go, but remind us, casually, gently, of who we are, and who we may become.