Customer Reviews

Veins

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I can't even wait to read the whole thing. I got my copy yesterday and read a few of Larry's poems and thought they were great. Larry Johnson mines history, mostly the history of the Roman Empire, and recreates snippets of history that come alive with marvelously chosen words. He does the same with the lives of famous writers and musicians and with memories of his early life in Mississippi. His poems are not easy to read. This book is not for people who are unwilling to bother researching some of his references, and a dictionary may help. Fortunately he includes explanatory notes on some of the history. Now I've read the whole thing. Twice. Some of the poems three or more times. Larry Johnson deserves to be ranked as one of the most intelligent poets working in America today.

In Veins, Larry Johnson's debut poetry collection, shades of the distant past are recalled in language that is vivid, precise, and immediate.
The collection offers two parts, "Adrenalin Night" and "Adrenalin Light." Part I is further divided into sections subtitled "Present to 1821" and "AD 406 to 966 BC."
In the first section of Part I, the poet pays tribute to literary lights including Weldon Kees, James Wright, Ezra Pound, Lorca, Oscar Wilde, and Keats; but in the poem called "Once," the poet calls upon the reader to witness a moment involving another rara avis--this one literal--an ivory-billed woodpecker shot by the grandfather of the poem's narrator because, as he told the boy, "I wanted you to see it."
In the second section of Part I, it is the poet who wants to enable us to see the humanity of individuals whose foibles and frailty often have been obscured by the vagaries of time and history. In "Death of Caracalla" he reminds us that the third century emperor died "while taking a piss--'' and in the haunting "Hadrian at Tivoli" we see the emperor Hadrian in seclusion at his country villa outside Rome, mourning the loss of his beloved eromenos, Antinous, whom Hadrian deified after the youth drowned in the Nile.
The poet allows a slave to speak from his grave of ashes beneath Mt. Vesuvius in "Red Skeletons of Herculaneum," explaining to the lady scientist who now studies him that the child in his arms, whom he tried to shield, was the daughter of his mistress.
In Part II, "Adrenalin Light," Johnson evokes the sly Greek poet Cavafy in the eponymous poem:

Because of our telephone conversation
you are coming at four o'clock
to see my kitchen of tri-colored glass.

I have not told you
that my eyes are as green as that Cretan stone
dredged up by a Greek fisherman in 1908,
said to be from the stars. . .

and that I have no kitchen.

Meanwhile, in "Pavane for a Dead Princess," an emperor whose grief is contained and stately observes,

Now she gleams small and white. Hermetic
Walls protect her from earth's violence,
While her energy and meaning
Scatter out and out through silence.

It is from just such silences, scattered throughout time, that Johnson has gathered meaning, and carried the lost into the light of recognition, for readers who open Veins.

Few earn the honor to share their work with the national archives. "Veins" is a collection of poetry from Larry Johnson, a man who has read his poetry in congress. His work is collected from countless decades since 1970, and his experience shines through. "Veins" is a fine volume, not to be missed. "To Lorca": We will not find you/though the afternoon sleeps like Egyptian gold,/though feet may pause over your groin,/though the two moles on your cheek nourish that phlox/and the white snails of your eyes are melted by lime.//What you were is the thirst of an orange tree/the fire of those ants in its roots./What you are will always be whatever we seek.

I have been saying for years that Larry Johnson is one of the last living true lyricists. Now everybody can find out. This is a man who wrote a villanelle about the greenhouse effect THIRTY YEARS before anthropogenic climate change hit the headlines. A VILLANELLE. Do you have any idea what it takes to write a decent villanelle? It is the most exhausting short form possible, a brief exercise that forces you to rely on all the genius of the language. It's like watching a martial-arts expert flow through a kata. It looks easy, but it took decades of training to get there.

That's just one example. Many have commented and will comment on the "historical" poems, and well they might. Vivid brief renderings of significant moments, often in the history of Rome, especially its decline. Sonnets, I mean sonnets, about Caesars and generals and the mothers of Caesars and the lovers of Caesars. And I love the history, the intense personal vision of it, which I could get no other way. But what impresses me no end is the artistry.

Finally here is a poet who is not afraid of beauty, but rips the veil away. Johnson, to borrow a quote, "has looked on beauty bare."

Larry Johnson knows how to capture the singing of the world in his own songs. Sure this stuff is intelligent, dense, full of uncommon information. And you were wanting what, John Grisham? For people with brains and passion and an ear for the true music of language, this is the go-to guy.

Larry Johnson? He's still alive, thank god, but I will say it anyway: His words are buffed chalcedony.

Much has been, and will continue to be, said about the masterful rendering
of Roman history in this collection. I will leave that to those much more
versed in all things classical than I. Veins, I will say, is one of the most
intelligent and accomplished books of poetry I have read in the past decade.
The poetry has depth, candor, commitment to form, and a language that has
real bite. Many of the poems are, in short, brilliant. Take one: "Sentry." It is
a dramatic monolog, but what makes it exceptional is that the speaker, the
"I," is generic. That is, when he says, in the first line, "I'm the one who always
dies at night for you," he is any sentry who has died at any time; and when he
says, in the last line, "No matter where I turn I turn my back," you know he is
speaking for all sentries--and for all of us. We are all sentries turning our backs
to each other. In between is a wrenching description of the various horrific deaths
a sentry suffers, and the taking to task of all who make of the sentry "Hero-fodder,"
mere entertainment to our celebrity-crazy age, and along the way, moving the poem
toward condemnation--toward satire. The voice, then, is both specific, personal,
and general, impersonal. All this, and in supple classic pentameter to boot. For this
one poem I would purchase Veins. And there is so very much more. Much.