Devin Johnston – författare

The poems in Devin Johnston's "Traveler" cross 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.

The selected poems of Devin Johnston, a poet who can "e;change the way you breathe"e; (Maureen N. McLane). Why call this plant a weed? Some flowersevince no difference betweengiving and taking, all their powersdispersed unseen beyond a stilethat your wants might for a little whilebe mine, and open to the light. Bright Thorn, distilling Devin Johnston's work across a quarter century and seven books, offers an alternative to our frenzied moment through the calm measured feeling and formal intelligence of his verse. Historical, philosophical, closely observational, and rooted evenly in the deep poetic past and the daily rhythms of American life, these poems open the world to imaginative scrutiny. Johnston is a chronicler in a Yeatsian sense, whose eye, cast discerningly over the landscape, is affectionate yet icily clear.

While the poems in this collection assay a very broad range of subjects, all of them demonstrate an awareness of what enormous challenges constitute the turning toward -- or away from -- the many faces of experience.

The field of ecopoetics', 'literature and environment' and 'nature writing' have become increasingly popular. Consisting of eight essays written in a compact and vivid prose reminiscent of Hazlitt, Thoreau and Delamain, Creaturely crosses the border between humans and animals, seeking out intersections between culture and nature in the city parks and empty lots of St Louis.'