From Library Journal
Having established himself as a fiction writer by publishing three novels in five years, Johnson returns to poetry with his first collection since The Incognito Lounge ( LJ 4/1/82), entering again a personal Twilight Zone of all-night diners, monasteries, and museums inhabited by "the sad people of space" who daily suffer "the terror/ of being just one personone chance, one set of days." Like that of his contemporary Lawrence Raab, Johnson's style stems directly from the Mark Strand school of late-show creepiness, his alienated narrators talking to themselves in landscapes of darkness and absence. But Johnson's loose, prosaic constructs lack resonance, and though they sometimes amuse and surprise, one detects a glibness that belies the nightmare. It's all just too chic to be true. Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
