I struggle to think of many worthwhile contemporary American poets. Charles Simic is dull, Christian Wiman arrogant, and Donald Hall as enjoyable as Monday morning drizzle.

Denis Johnson is best known for his fiction, particularly the story collection Jesus' Son. I think his poetic bent finds better expression in the fiction. As with Bukowski, Johnson’s poems are largely formless sprawl, spurning capital letters, lines that scan, images that blaze, or stanzas that demand to be memorised. The later poems ramble too much and leak religious imagery over everything like soap from a fractured dispenser. Disappointing.

I'm telling you it's cold inside the body that is not the body,
lonesome behind the face
that is certainly not the face
of the person one meant to become.

3.5 stars

The latter poems are much more vivid.

Probably a near perfect poetry collection (there’s two unfortunate phrases in here) but I don’t think I’ll give star ratings to poetry collections. Inspired by Bukowski clearly but not as objectifying. Johnson’s highs in poetry are maybe not as great as the best of his narrative work but I believe that you can see how it influenced the greatness of his prose and I’ll come back to this anthology often.

Collects all but two of his published poems (I’ll have to find a way to seek that pair out eventually) and moves from his late teens to his late forties. DJ continues to blow me away with his use of language.

I've never actually reviewed a book of poetry and I'm having a hard time w/ this one b/c yeah I really dig this book and it proves that Mr. Johnson can literally write anything extremely well but am coming up short on specific reasons outside of the general tone and themes represented in these poems. I tend to prefer the longer more rollicking poems that follow a kinda story albeit a bit fractured and stream of consciousy. but the shorter, simpler, more cerebral ones also have their moments. it was also nice have the collected works in a chronological order so you can see him develop and change as a poet. and I can't stress enough that if you're a fan of Johnson's fiction then you should probably check this book out b/c it really captures the feel of America and the hopeless people that inhabit it just as well as his fiction.

I think I prefer DJ's fiction, but there are some stone cold classics in here.

While in the creative writing seminars I wrote a letter to one of my teachers and said the Denis Johnson writes the way I wish I could write. My teacher was not impressed. I graduated anyway. He can kiss my literarily certified ass. This book is amazing.

Comforting always is what these poems are, but the words get blunt after a while: only so much yearning one can hold about the evening shadows, after all. Yet he tries!

This is one of the most amazing collections of poetry. Johnson's 1st book is amazing...i wish i had a copy! Skip the "New" poems; his earlier work is much better.

Read...or be dumb!!!

"as the winter slips up under / the palms of my hands, it is getting / harder to be a poet: i am woe / itself. my car fades / without pain from the parking lot. it / crumples to one knee, like / an elephant, startled / into lifelessness by the hungry bullets of winter."




an excerpt from, "In Praise of Distances"

I try to read at least one poem every morning before work, and this book has been in my rotation since last summer. The good poems are really good and make you think "there's Denis Johnson." As with a Collected edition, some of the poems included are not the sharpest, nor do they feel significant on their own, but as a whole this book meant a lot to me when I chose to visit it.

The towels rot and disgust me on this damp
peninsula where they invented mist
and drug abuse and taught the light to fade,
where my top-quality rock-bottom heart
cries because I'll never get to kiss
your famous knees again in a room made
vague by throwing a scarf over a lamp.
Things get pretty radical in the dark:
the sailboats on the inlet sail away;
the provinces of actuality
crawl on the sea; the dusk now tenderly
ministers to the fallen parking lots—
the sunset instantaneous on the fenders,
memory and peace . . . the grip of chaos . . .