Traveler Poems [Paperback]

The poems in Devin Johnston'sTravelercross great distances, from the Red Hills of Kansas to the Rough Bounds of the Scottish Highlands, following weather patterns, bird migrations, and ocean voyages. Less literally, these poems move through translations and protean transformations. Their subjects are often next to nothing in several senses: cloud shadows racing across a valley before dusk, the predawn expectation of a child's birth, or the static-electric charge of clothing fabric. Throughout, Johnston offers vivid glimpses of the phenomenal world: He describes objects with his hands and his eyes, noting texture, heft, and fit (Boston Review). Equally, one finds a keen attention to sound in the patterning of subtle rhymes and rhythms, demonstrating care and precision with line and pause (Poetry).

Traveleris Johnston's sixth book, and his fourth poetry collection, followingSources(2008), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. Johnston writes in the long shadow of William Carlos Williams' dictum, no ideas but in things, but Johnston proves words are things. He is not a dictionary poet, but readers will find that visits to the dictionary are rewarded. The title poem, about the migration of a Blackburnian warbler, includes pinnate leaves. Pinnate means feather-shaped. So the coincidence of the bird arriving in Johnston's black walnut tree becomes consequential, an excess of meaning unearthed like a fossil from the sediments of English. Even if his subjects are prosaic, Johnston is not a poet of the quotidian: his closely observed poems find meaning at these nerve-endings of word and world. Iona, the longest poem in the book, includes many uncommon words, as if new geography and geology opened new leaves of fine print. He is one of the finest craftsmen of verse we have. Michael Autrey, Booklist (starred)

Devin Johnston takes you with him when he goes down Route M or ambles along the shl0