Remains to Be Seen Works Old and New Poems Halvard Johnson Books
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Praise for Halvard Johnson’s work, old and new
Halvard Johnson . . . writes narratives, which are absurd fragments of chaos rather than elegant aesthetic forms; yet in energetic bursts of wit they exhibit uncanny control . . . Johnson casts these clever shadows to the edge of nonsense where media glibly flash the surreal, and enduring concepts get devoured in sound bites.
Roberto Bonazzi
Many poets send me their books, but few I’ve received are as fine as Halvard Johnson’s Guide to the Tokyo Subway. I have at least fourteen favorite poems, including “Morning Calm,” “Paris in Old Photographs,” “La Violencia,” “How to Write Your Own Obituary,” and “Take Me to the Water.” And for sheer delight, “Thirteen Variations on a Line by Robert Frost.” In just about all the poems there’s something fascinating—an image, a tone, a total consciousness (often an achieved calm), an experiment with sound or phrasing. I found myself re-reading many of the poems, so many are ‘locked’ and provide complete satisfaction. It’s also the wide range of Guide to the Tokyo Subway that I greatly admire, the complete interest Halvard Johnson brings to so many things, the expansiveness of these poems even while they’re leading us to still moments. I’ve never seen another poet acknowledge the nuclear power plant, include it in solid lines, and then, in the same poem, move beyond it out to the Zen-like horizon in that unique ‘bomb and calm’ style which is all Johnson’s own.
Dick Allen
Halvard Johnson’s book Organ Harvest with Entrance of Clones represents the work of a quiet pluralist who is by equal measure amazed by the world and dismayed & angered by those who would control it. The poems here range from abstract musings (or amusements) on relationships to ironic assaults on the hypocrisies that run through the current political landscape. Throughout, Johnson uses the fungibility of language to say at least two things at every opportunity, one of them literal and the other ironic or whimsical. There is an aspect of jesterism or merry prankster in each poem, though at the center of the book is an optimism that our ‘better natures’ still reside in us somewhere and that eventually, perhaps through the application of poetry and intelligence, they will rise to the surface, if only just in time. A solid book recommended.
Jorn Ake
He’s the first poet I’ve read in a long time who makes sense of what’s going on in the world. Edward Field
Remains to Be Seen Works Old and New Poems Halvard Johnson Books
Remains to be Seen is a tremendous book - work in the rich line that runs from Stevens through our NYC '50-'65 painter-and-poet uprising. It is a fully mature voice by now, polished, urgent, kind of hip-but-august-in-spite-of-itself.There's a kind of sad poise in the voice. It leaves me glancing around, as I write, from an iPad screen to an NBA game on a tv screen to the screen door thru which, a month ago, I saw an extremely real cougar emerge from under my back porch - and the way some part of me right now keeps track of what is screen and what is performer, counterpointing them at will, that pinball-downflow feel of our one-interruption-after-another dailiness, right there is where Hal Johnson's words live for me. There's also a merry-prankster feel feel to the voice, as well as a sneer now'n then, maybe even the hint of an elixir bein' sold out back. Ashbery-like but not him, free of his self-conscious twitching and sniffing, plus a disdain halfway Swiftian.
Equally masterful is how the poems are displayed, in that, the most free-standing, the most completely realized - however we used to say it - are one thing, but the others, instead of seeming merely failed attempts at such, call out to be read as stage directions and glossaries, interpretive keys, esoteric graffiti. The eye of a gallery owner!
Three poems in the last section especially catch the eye. Tropical Forest with Monkeys and Gracing Light and Palmdale Sonnet represent, for me, the signature tone-range of the book, a paired-opposite-plus-one, hop-skip-and-jump, tripod-progression of feelings, here going from monkeys to indigenous folk to molecules, cartoon spoof to straightforward empathy to Fox News. It is very nimble. Fifty years. This is a big-time book. He oughta be a lot more, as they say, famous.
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Remains to Be Seen Works Old and New Poems Halvard Johnson Books Reviews
Remains to be Seen is a tremendous book - work in the rich line that runs from Stevens through our NYC '50-'65 painter-and-poet uprising. It is a fully mature voice by now, polished, urgent, kind of hip-but-august-in-spite-of-itself.
There's a kind of sad poise in the voice. It leaves me glancing around, as I write, from an iPad screen to an NBA game on a tv screen to the screen door thru which, a month ago, I saw an extremely real cougar emerge from under my back porch - and the way some part of me right now keeps track of what is screen and what is performer, counterpointing them at will, that pinball-downflow feel of our one-interruption-after-another dailiness, right there is where Hal Johnson's words live for me. There's also a merry-prankster feel feel to the voice, as well as a sneer now'n then, maybe even the hint of an elixir bein' sold out back. Ashbery-like but not him, free of his self-conscious twitching and sniffing, plus a disdain halfway Swiftian.
Equally masterful is how the poems are displayed, in that, the most free-standing, the most completely realized - however we used to say it - are one thing, but the others, instead of seeming merely failed attempts at such, call out to be read as stage directions and glossaries, interpretive keys, esoteric graffiti. The eye of a gallery owner!
Three poems in the last section especially catch the eye. Tropical Forest with Monkeys and Gracing Light and Palmdale Sonnet represent, for me, the signature tone-range of the book, a paired-opposite-plus-one, hop-skip-and-jump, tripod-progression of feelings, here going from monkeys to indigenous folk to molecules, cartoon spoof to straightforward empathy to Fox News. It is very nimble. Fifty years. This is a big-time book. He oughta be a lot more, as they say, famous.
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