Dragons: Poems

by Devin Johnston

Overview

The seventh book of poems from Devin Johnston, a poet who can "change the way you breathe" (Maureen N. McLane).

Dragons is a collection of sonorous, sensual poems from Devin Johnston, “one of the finest craftsmen of verse we have” (Michael Autrey, Booklist). Attentive to both the physical world and our place in it, his arresting images of nature and human life ring with quiet power. An elegy for a ten-year-old hen; a fourth grader seeing a fox, his “fur waistcoat immaculate”; the sound of neighbors arguing set against the “pallid flames” of the setting sun: together, such scenes form a resonant, restrained meditation on life’s journey and “the feeling of time.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374607302
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	03/14/2023
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.65(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Born in 1970, Devin Johnston spent his childhood in North Carolina. He is the author of six previous books of poetry and two books of prose, including Creaturely and Other Essays. He works for Flood Editions, an independent publishing house, and teaches at Saint Louis University, in Missouri, where he lives.

Editorial Reviews

02/20/2023

Johnston’s lyrical eighth collection (after Mosses and Lichens) explores the present and past with effortless rhyme and gentle music. Sound is crucial to these poems and is also, often, the subject matter itself. He references bird calls: the “sour whistle” of a white-throated sparrow—“each bird a name, each name a tune/ to whistle as you walk along/ preoccupied with the rise and fall/ of each reflexive, raucous call.” Johnston embraces traditional forms, even as he admits, “These days, authorities dismiss/ the subtle circuitries of rhyme/ as relics of another time.” Inspiration comes from a morning dog walk, J. Alfred Prufrock, troubadours, Horace, and Sir Thomas Wyatt. One poem narrates the Greek myth of Baucis and Philemon, an elderly couple who unknowingly welcomed Zeus and Hermes into their home. After giving the gods a meal, “their old house, snug for only two,/ transformed into a temple:/ forked posts swelled to columns,/ thatch glittered as though gilded,/ doors hardened into bronze/ chased with friezes, and dirt floors/ metamorphosed into marble.” The poem lingers in the details of the modest space: wooden wine bowls, a wobbly table, and the simple, nourishing meal. These poems are well wrought and moving, each filled with a “mild expectancy” that connects the mundane with the awe that gives life meaning. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"[Dragons] moves with quiet elegance. His contemplative tone plumbs the depth of the natural world—and its humor, too." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"[Dragons] explores the present and past with effortless rhyme and gentle music . . . These poems are well wrought and moving, each filled with a 'mild expectancy' that connects the mundane with the awe that gives life meaning." —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher