Man, oh man. This guy knows how to write some poetry.

He has this way...this thing he does...he takes these real simple events and finds a way to talk about them in unusual ways that shock the breath out of me.

This book is best when read aloud. The rhythm of his poetry is what affects me the most, almost like he is chanting or singing these things.

Um, you just have to trust me on this one.

One of my faves so far:

"...The remedy for loneliness
is in learning to admit
solitude as one admits
the bayonet: gracefully,
now that already
it pierces the heart."

Been busy living lately. A beautiful book of poems- been a wonderful companion over the last few months.

I’d love to hear Tom Waits voice the late-great Denis Johnson’s poetry. The in-your-veins imagery of bus stops, diners & dive bars would be a terrific fit. At its best, Incognito Lounge is a marvel of the Jesus’ Son maestro’s empathy for life’s losers through a whiskey-&-heroin haze. Self-indulgent, sure, but visceral too. “It’s beautiful Susan, her hair sticky with gin/Our Lady of Wet Glass-Rings on the Album Cover/streaming with hatred in the heat/as the record falls & the snake band chords begin/to break like terrible news from the Rolling Stones.”

Pois un descubrimento, gostei!

There are four sections and dozens of poems in THE INCOGNITO LOUNGE, but the only phrase that I keep going back to is Emergency Broadcasting System, which is mentioned in "Radio," one of the later pieces in this collection. It resonated with me. My mind is like the Emergency Broadcasting System, only I have no idea if what I'm hearing is a test or not, and it's constantly interrupting the regularly scheduled programming.

Poetry remains for me a journey without a roadmap, and each poet I read creates a landscape of words and images unique to them. Some I recognize, others I don't, but the best always share the terra firma. When I entered Denis Johnson territory I felt that Emergency Broadcasting System fill the screen even before he called it out, but the signal faded, giving way to hope, which I saw as the facts piled up and the EMT arrived to pull the survivors from the wreckage. That's a connection, something we all can live through, for the alternative means no more road.

Quit thinking you're cool and read a poetry book, why don't you? "It is like stepping into the wake of a tactless remark"
This is the feel-good book of the year.

I've loved this book these many years. Last time I looked (a long while ago), it was out of print. A true original. No one writes about light and shadows with such passionate intensity.

holy BEAUTY! I found this at the bookstore today! I thought I'd read all the Denis Johnson books out there! I'm shaking with LOVE and HEARTBREAK! He is absolutely from another dimension! His words are exquisite and truth and vulnerable and hit the mark so had me stop breathing while reading!
some quotes:
"We work in this building and we are hideous
in the flourescent light, you know our clothes
woke up this morning and swallowed us like jewels
and ride up and down the elevators, filled with us,
turning and returning like the spray of light that goes
around dance-halls among the dancing fools.
My office smells like a theory."
"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."
"..now the shelter is only a hailstone
that fell there,
for already they've folded away the voices,
already they've put away the light,..."

Johnson's words are fused with his brilliance, his depth, his vulnerability, his fire! He never ceases to amaze! This collection is a choir, a film, a journal revealed, life sessions with a therapist! Johnson is a phenomenon that has me crying as I read his poems, his prose! A loss we will never gain!

VÉSPERAS
As toalhas apodrecem e metem-me nojo nesta península
cheia de mofo onde inventaram o nevoeiro
e o uso excessivo de drogas e ensinaram a luz a extinguir-se,
onde o meu coração de alta qualidade chora,
profundamente desolado, pois nunca mais vou poder beijar
os teus famosos joelhos num quarto tornado
nebuloso por uma écharpe atirada para cima de uma lâmpada.
As coisas tornam-se bastante radicais no escuro:
os veleiros zarpam na enseada;
os domínios da realidade
rastejam para o mar; o crepúsculo cuida
agora ternamente dos parques de estacionamento em colapso -
o pôr-do-sol momentâneo nos para-choques,
memória e paz… o aperto do caos…

De Denis Johnson só tinha lido “Sonhos e Comboios”, que me disse muito pouco, mas fiquei com a impressão de que era o típico escritor americano, com as referências culturais e geográficas que associo à escrita dos homens brancos dessas latitudes nos finais do século XX e início do século XXI. E, de facto em “Haverá Sempre um Lento Alfabeto de Chuva” cá estão as paisagens e a americana que associo aos EUA: os bares, as jukeboxes, as cabinas fotográficas e até os donuts, mas tudo sublimado pelo olhar melancólico e desamparado de Johnson, que exsuda o mal-estar pessoal ou amoroso que me cativa na poesia.

VIDA ADULTA
Lá fora a tarde
de primavera
vai-se processando, meu amor,
tal como as nossas vozes
se despedem de nós
a caminho de casa, rumo
às planícies, e as nossas próprias formas,
à medida que as forçamos
a serem apenas esta, se preparam
para se misturar com outras
tardes, possivelmente
nesta mesma sala
- como pequenas poeiras
Pairando nas faixas de luz do sol -,
ou noutras câmaras silenciosas.
Não quero que tenhas medo
enquanto estamos aqui a desperdiçar
as nossas vidas, incapazes de falarmos
e prestes a entrarmos no sonho
de termos outra vez tocado
esta parte, aquela suavidade
de carne agora morta e enterrada,
e termos ouvido as tonalidades ascendentes
de uma voz que se limitava a falar;
é possível que se ouça
o canto dos que não têm voz
desenredando pelo vazio
ilimitado um silêncio
desenhado numa tensão tão lenta
que a sua
música celestial nos
encontra antes de começar,
e estamos já em plena dança.

Talvez o melhor livro de poesia que li este ano. Nele descobri um poeta que — para minha surpresa — supera o ficcionista.

The world will burst like an intestine in the sun,
the dark turn to granite and the granite to a name,
but there will always be somebody riding the bus
through these intersections strewn with broken glass
among speechless women beating their little ones,
always a slow alphabet of rain
speaking of drifting and perishing to the air,
always these definite jails of light in the sky
at the wedding of this clarity and this storm
and a woman's turning—her languid flight of hair
traveling through frame after frame of memory
where the past turns, its face sparking like emery,
to open its grace and incredible harm
over my life, and I will never die.

"The centre of the world is closed. Only the Incognito Lounge is open".

I admit, I bailed on these poems often. Other times I gravitated to a few and read them so much they became threatening.

Denis Johnson is a fearless writer and deserving of the same from his readers. I'm confident I failed him there.

Unlike many poetry collections I've read over the last fifteen years, there are no 'filler' poems here, each poem is a world, the first populated by faceless neighbours, the occupants of his 'Incognito Lounge'. Other poems share company with the 'heavily rouged', 'Andromedans', 'passengers', 'lovers', God, a 'delinquent son'.

I've read reviews where the readers wax lyrical on the boozy, rough, Tom Waits-esque backdrops and that is all very romantic, but really for me, at the crux of all that poeticism, Denis Johnson is a truthsayer, unremittingly so. The very nature of self-deception is studied with a grim sense of humor. Liars and their fears are paraded naked with a perverse delight. He also puts himself under the microscope

from The Flames

My thoughts are like that,
turning and going back where nothing wants them,
where the door opens and a road
of light falls through it
from behind you and pain
starts to whisper with your voice;
where you stand inside your own absence,
your eyes still smoky from dreaming,
the ruthless iron press
of love and failure making
a speechless church out of your dark
and invisible face.

from A Berkeley Notebook

One changes so much
from moment to moment
that when one hugs
oneself against the chill
air at the inception
of spring, at night,
knees drawn to chin,
he finds himself in the arms
of a total stranger,
the arms of one he might move
away from on the dark playground.

The last quarter of the book contains poems that are a touch more redemptive but in tone and power they remain gut wrenching.

Brothers, I reached you, and you took me in.
You saw me when I was invisible,
you spoke to me when I was deaf,
you thanked me when I was a secret,
and how will I make of myself something
at this hour when I am already made?

And lastly, I'll close out on my review with the final poem in this collection (and a favourite):

Passengers

The world will burst like an intestine in the sun,
the dark turn to granite and the granite to a name,
but there will always be somebody riding the bus
through these intersections strewn with broken glass
among speechless women beating their little ones,
always a slow alphabet of rain
speaking of drifting and perishing to the air,
always these definite jails of light in the sky
at the wedding of this clarity and this storm
and a woman’s turning — her languid flight of hair
traveling through frame after frame of memory
where the past turns, its face sparking like emery,
to open its grace and incredible harm
over my life, and I will never die.

21/10/2013

Reading this collection again 'I was healed by everything that happened'.

For all those readers ignorant to the precision and artistry of poetry - read Denis Johnson's work.