Böcker av Melissa Fite Johnson

Midlife Abecedarian is a nostalgic collection that takes the reader on a journey through time. It provides a template for a life well-lived, even if you're only halfway through. Conjuring memories and a sense of satisfaction and comfort, Midlife Abecedarian is a map to things remembered and things best left forgotten. It does not reminisce on the one that got away, instead it shows the reader that the one who stayed is the one to build a life with. With a keen eye for making the ordinary extraordinary, Melissa Fite Johnson pulls the reader into her world, which may not be cool to the high schoolers she teaches, but it is a world you'll find yourself reflected back in. And it is a world you'll want to return to, again and again. **With deep, unapologetic attention to the revelations of midlife, Melissa Fite Johnson's MIDLIFE ABECEDARIAN reads as devotional to the miraculous present and as fearless, honest reckoning with the past. What does it mean to find peace, to be grounded in our own right at the midpoint of our lives, even as God is a glass / drying on the counter, even as the wind insists and every blade of grass bristles? Who are we as women if we do not choose to be mothers? Who are we as women if we choose to love ourselves and to be loved? MIDLIFE ABECEDARIAN accounts for what remains unresolved in our histories, but it also insists that we acknowledge the sacred and ordinary moments of daily life as they unfold. In this striking collection, Johnson acclaims the power of forging one's own path, in a world which tries relentlessly to define us. -Joan Kwon Glass, author of Night SwimThis collection revels in formal skill and inventiveness, filled with sonnets, villanelles, pantoums, and of course abecedarians as well as free verse and prose poems. These poems invite the reader to engage not only with the contemporary but also with American literary tradition, particularly represented by Whitman, who appears in several poems as a kind of ornery muse. In response to Whitman's cosmic perspective, Melissa Fite Johnson asks us to pay attention to the inescapable, ineffable texture of the now: "I am trying to write the present. / A quiet night, a photo of a moment // I wouldn't think to photograph. Isn't this / the origin of all poems? The blink, the breath."-Laura Passin, author of Borrowing Your BodyIn Midlife Abecedarian, Johnson "miracles" the ordinary, claiming "no one wants to hear that shit" and then "writing the opposite." She states, "I was beginning," as she is, and as we all are, every day, beginning anew. These poems insist on vulnerability, on NOT pretending, as they urge the reader to believe that "there are many paths to happiness." The speaker is inviting-part 90's teen, part woman, part teacher, part poet. This book is one of those paths. These poems are a balm, offering, "This is why / we're here-to live and to die, for someone to care." Isn't that the point of poetry? To find magic in the ordinary? She admits that loving her life might not be a popular opinion, but it is. We should all be so lucky. Let these poems inspire love, attention and overall, care. -Leah Umansky, author of Of Tyrant

These poems tell the story of loss: loss of a father stolen by disease, loss of innocence. And while it could easily stop there this collection doesn't. Instead, it gathers strength and finds its voice and its fight. With wonder and awe and some well-placed anger, we see these poems emerge on the other side with a bit of hope and even happiness.The poems of Melissa Fite Johnson's Green excavate the bittersweet tenderness invoked by the collection's title. To be green is to be naïve, heading into a sea of defining experiences, a vantage Johnson wonderfully explores in poems that chart the pains of girlhood: the casual critiques that stick, the difficulty of relationships with boys, family, friends. She also writes movingly of her disabled father. Grappling with the grief and guilt evoked by his death, Johnson admits, "If a poem resurrects, how many times have I tried?" While some losses cannot be reversed, it is in this act of writing that Johnson offers readers another vision of green: to grow through challenge, to will oneself to flourish despite pain, is to be fully alive, a trajectory Green reminds is possible for us all.-Ruth Williams, author of Flatlands In Melissa Fite Johnson's beautiful new book, Green, a body and a heart are both things that can be divided. Johnson looks at the way grief has its own language and how a mouth is a thing that can both create and erase. In these poems, the past has crystallized into desire lessons, the fear that accompanies those first encounters, and the inherited legacies that shape how we see ourselves. This book knows time slips away quickly but holds us in unflinching memory before releasing us to the wide and green world. -Traci Brimhall, author of Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod In her latest poetry collection, Melissa Fite Johnson somehow manages to lace grief with hope, and questioning with reckoning. Love is at the heart of this collection, but not simple love: love that questions, love that demands, love that is irreverent and taxing, love in its fragility and strength. The poems dig through the rubble of youth and uncover hard truths, and the poems show how when we are young, we may think something horrible will swallow the rest of our lives, and then it doesn't, and how this is terrible and beautiful all at once. This poet writes of the connection we have as humans to each other, even when the string that ties us is so thin it can barely be found; yet she finds it, and she plucks. -Shuly Xóchitl Cawood, author of Trouble Can Be So Beautiful at the Beginning The poems in Green, both searing and soft-hearted, span from early childhood to old age, and demonstrate with consistent poignancy that girlhood and womanhood are not separate phases of life but as interconnected as fibers in a leaf. Through the unique lens of the color green and all its complicated connotations-newness, nature, jealousy, and more-Johnson unflinchingly examines the many shades of human relationships, asking "What if?" before "time rusts the gate closed." These touching, impeccably crafted poems dare to heal the emotional wounds that come from living and loving in a gendered world.-Marianne Kunkel, author of Hillary, Made Up

In the 1920s and 1930s, Pittsburg, KS was a major coal-mining town, attracting various ethnic groups from southeast Europe and beyond. The often belligerent and divisive spirit of the miners--and the unpredictable politics of Southeast Kansas--earned the region the nickname, "The Little Balkans." The four poets (Al Ortolani, Melissa Fite Johnson, Adam Jameson, JT Knoll) appearing in this collection carry forward that same proud, independent spirit. They call themselves White Buffalo, after a now-defunct café in Pittsburg that offered writers, poets, artists, musicians, and friends a place of warmth and community, which in turn fostered an environment of challenge and diversity.Ghost Sign epitomizes honest work that is both lyrical and painful while simultaneously joyous and sad. It is rooted in folklore and mystery, and its place is informed by powerful imagery: sunlight on the crater of a strip pit, the shadow of an owl at Camp 50, junkyard mechanics, railroad men, and a grandfather at a piano plunking out Methodist hymns. With craft and passion, the Ghost Sign poets, who each know how to remember, resurrect those indomitable, lost places, folks, and ghosts from the forgotten past of Southeast Kansas.Published in partnership with Spartan Press.