In Absolutes We Seek Each Other
Finalist for a 2014 Oregon Book Award
For a moment, reader, as you orient yourself in one of Jessica Johnson’s poems, you might classify a scene as quiet and scientific, or moody, wet, and metrical; then a shift and, god, it’s luminous and grief-struck and haunting and it’s yours. The linked poems in the book’s first section are a feat of beauty: the settings for this memory of transformation and lost innocence are a greenhouse, DNA lab, fish hatchery, swimming pool, and slant house, each mysterious and glimmering. The second section of ocean dwellers, anatomies, and sea-soaked lyrics is equally remarkable. Jessica Johnson is a true discovery. -Kathleen Flenniken
For a moment, reader, as you orient yourself in one of Jessica Johnson’s poems, you might classify a scene as quiet and scientific, or moody, wet, and metrical; then a shift and, god, it’s luminous and grief-struck and haunting and it’s yours. The linked poems in the book’s first section are a feat of beauty: the settings for this memory of transformation and lost innocence are a greenhouse, DNA lab, fish hatchery, swimming pool, and slant house, each mysterious and glimmering. The second section of ocean dwellers, anatomies, and sea-soaked lyrics is equally remarkable. Jessica Johnson is a true discovery. -Kathleen Flenniken