Marjorie Johnson

Mad Mother Moon Marjorie Johnson

MAD MOTHER MOON roots poems in the soil, floats them in the sky, sets them close to home, and far afield. The show has the usual cast of characters: family and neighbors, discarded lovers and cruel heartbreakers. Some poems are still lifes, others gambol and frisk. Things noble and sorrowful are sung in modes at once dignified and antic. Vocabulary and analogies sometimes startle, but they are always apt and often trail harmonic afterimages. Rhythms may lurch and stagger or flow gently as Sweet Afton; feelings find body from line to line in vocalic and consonantal melodies. Readers will find echoes of the poet's reverence for Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Joyce, where sardonic wit garnishes life's severe realities. Flippant airs may mask pain or anger; major may resolve to minor, with, perhaps, a playful coda.