Sarabande Books, 2017. $14.95, 72 pages.
Jenny Johnson’s first collection of poetry begins with an echo, both in form and in content, that reshapes the fervent praise of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty.” Yet unlike Hopkins, Johnson’s poem, “Dappled Things,” exposes creation’s freckled loveliness to be sensual, even sexual:
Or Lovewe could pretend to be utter strangers!I, a house sparrow, and you, a cowbirdhopping over to chatteruntil you touch your lower bill, headbowed to my breast feathers.
Sex is the singular, primal force of nature, the urge that yields to life, subservient to creation and ecstasy, and Johnson utilizes this universal element to great effect in her poems. Her poems challenge cultural norms, celebrating a range of sexualities in their characterizations of the human and nonhuman animals that inhabit their…
