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After the Ark
AFTER THE ARK, Luke Johnson's remarkable first collection of poetry, chronicles the author's upbringing as the son of two ministers. A seasonal triptych, the poems root themselves in the landscapes they inhabit: from the boulder fields of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the endless dusk of Clam Gulch, Alaska, to a half-frozen lake in Upstate New York. These poems ask the reader to move inward, to look hard at loss and see it stark and sure. The narrative, often deceptively formal poems, show us the affects domestic tragedies can have on a family's faith in each other, how absence can color their collective memory. Ultimately, they are poems of hope, artifacts or rescues of some kind. Each one is a small proof that no matter the magnitude of the flood, through remembering there can always be salvage. These poems ask the reader to believe there is something left worth saving.
- GenresPoetry
84 pages, Paperback
First published January 15, 2011
13 people want to read
About the author
Luke Johnson
1 book9 followersI am the author of After the Ark (NYQ Books, 2011). My work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, New England Review, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. I live in Nashville, where I teach high school English.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 17, 2011
A complex elegy on a mother's death, this is a book that must be read slowly, and given recent conversations about reading straight through or dipping in and out (here and here), I would advocate for reading this one front to back, as the progression of the speaker seems paramount to experiencing the book as a whole.
The speaker throughout the book is the son of two ministers, and in the acknowledgments, Luke thanks his parents for "their love, their bookcases, and their level-headed pulpits," identifying them both as reverends. So, the reader assumes the close confessional nature of the poems. The book is divided into three untitled sections, with each section being introduced by a triolet. I'm in awe of this tactic, as the triolet is not often connected with funereal themes in my mind. However, these three triolets do a fine job of setting the tone for each section.
The first, "Nor'easter," has as it's second and final line, "the highway buried, sky a grave." And we begin, then, with an image of death. The poems in the first section, take the reader through the illness of the mother, memories of youth, memories of a split in the parent's marriage that was healed, and the death; however, not in chronological order. This circular time line is crucial to the entire book, as it mimics the fluidity of time during a long illness, a death, and the aftermath. We begin with "Moving Day," a poem filled with ordinary domestic images as the speaker clears away "boxes of sermons / collected in her study" ... "prayers ready / to be gathered and stored away." He notes "the weight of her words" and that weight filters through every poem in the rest of the book.
The second section is formally interesting as well as being filled with more poems attempting to reconcile the grief of the son. There is the triolet and then a series of sonnets. There are nine sonnets, but between the fifth and the sixth is one that is purposely unfinished, "Box Kite" at only eight lines. That gaping space where the sextet is supposed to be becomes the formal metaphor for the grave and the unsayable fact of grief. The speaker of these poems has much to reconcile: his mother's death, his own residual anger with her over a fracture in the parent's marriage, his position as the child of two ministers, how to help his father cope, and how to move through the world now as a motherless son. In "Vulture Tree," the sonnet opens "We were never so holy, and apples / in the ministers' orchard rot the same." Of all professions, perhaps we believe ministers, and by extension their families, most capable of dealing with the great tragedies of life, and yet, these poems reveal that human nature is human nature no matter a person's profession or calling.
Finally, in the third section, the poems become wider, deeper, more exploratory as the speaker moves out into the world after the death. The poem "Manse" begins "It might be easier to blame the dead / for disrepair... ." This honest admission floors me as it also hints at the ease with which we often blame our parents for our own faults left unrepaired. The speaker, though, resists this, still searching for a way to make sense of human nature. The section and the book conclude with the title poem "After the Ark," which weaves together the religious questions and the familial ones that have embedded themselves throughout the book. In this poem, the speaker contemplates the Ark story, and how "scores of sinners" ... "would've drowned in what my mother showed me // of God's love, the ever-lasting compassion / too definite / to be human... ." He struggles with this: "how // my mother left my father and I still don't know / how to forgive her, if I need to -- Genesis // missed these unpaid fares... ." The poem ends with a devastatingly true couplet:
It's up to us to grow gills, to learn to breathe
here where the flood has become the body.
I applaud Luke's generous work for managing to be both religious and domestic, without being high-handed or overly sentimental. Above all this book is an honest account of difficult love.
The speaker throughout the book is the son of two ministers, and in the acknowledgments, Luke thanks his parents for "their love, their bookcases, and their level-headed pulpits," identifying them both as reverends. So, the reader assumes the close confessional nature of the poems. The book is divided into three untitled sections, with each section being introduced by a triolet. I'm in awe of this tactic, as the triolet is not often connected with funereal themes in my mind. However, these three triolets do a fine job of setting the tone for each section.
The first, "Nor'easter," has as it's second and final line, "the highway buried, sky a grave." And we begin, then, with an image of death. The poems in the first section, take the reader through the illness of the mother, memories of youth, memories of a split in the parent's marriage that was healed, and the death; however, not in chronological order. This circular time line is crucial to the entire book, as it mimics the fluidity of time during a long illness, a death, and the aftermath. We begin with "Moving Day," a poem filled with ordinary domestic images as the speaker clears away "boxes of sermons / collected in her study" ... "prayers ready / to be gathered and stored away." He notes "the weight of her words" and that weight filters through every poem in the rest of the book.
The second section is formally interesting as well as being filled with more poems attempting to reconcile the grief of the son. There is the triolet and then a series of sonnets. There are nine sonnets, but between the fifth and the sixth is one that is purposely unfinished, "Box Kite" at only eight lines. That gaping space where the sextet is supposed to be becomes the formal metaphor for the grave and the unsayable fact of grief. The speaker of these poems has much to reconcile: his mother's death, his own residual anger with her over a fracture in the parent's marriage, his position as the child of two ministers, how to help his father cope, and how to move through the world now as a motherless son. In "Vulture Tree," the sonnet opens "We were never so holy, and apples / in the ministers' orchard rot the same." Of all professions, perhaps we believe ministers, and by extension their families, most capable of dealing with the great tragedies of life, and yet, these poems reveal that human nature is human nature no matter a person's profession or calling.
Finally, in the third section, the poems become wider, deeper, more exploratory as the speaker moves out into the world after the death. The poem "Manse" begins "It might be easier to blame the dead / for disrepair... ." This honest admission floors me as it also hints at the ease with which we often blame our parents for our own faults left unrepaired. The speaker, though, resists this, still searching for a way to make sense of human nature. The section and the book conclude with the title poem "After the Ark," which weaves together the religious questions and the familial ones that have embedded themselves throughout the book. In this poem, the speaker contemplates the Ark story, and how "scores of sinners" ... "would've drowned in what my mother showed me // of God's love, the ever-lasting compassion / too definite / to be human... ." He struggles with this: "how // my mother left my father and I still don't know / how to forgive her, if I need to -- Genesis // missed these unpaid fares... ." The poem ends with a devastatingly true couplet:
It's up to us to grow gills, to learn to breathe
here where the flood has become the body.
I applaud Luke's generous work for managing to be both religious and domestic, without being high-handed or overly sentimental. Above all this book is an honest account of difficult love.
July 13, 2012
The death of any close friend or loved one is a wrenching, dislocating experience. The knowns disappear, replaced by unknowns. Simple things – a regular afternoon visit, the way the dinner table is set, a shared piece of music – suddenly disappear or become painful reminders. For Christians, the loss is tempered by the knowledge and hope of heaven, but the loss and absence is no less great.
When one loses a parent, a number of transitions begin, some immediately. Some say the loss of a parent is when you truly become an adult. Death sets certain processes in motion – legal processes, family processes, personal processes. If there is a surviving parent, that relationship will change as well. Things can both ravel and unravel, and at the same time.
It is those ideas underlying the death of a parent that inform After the Ark: Poems by Luke Johnson. Johnson, whose poems have appeared in such publications as The New York Quarterly and Best Young Poets and who’s received awards from the Academy of American Poets and Atlantic Monthly, lost his mother to cancer when she was 54. Both of his parents were ministers, and so faith plays through these poems as well, a faith that simultaneously questions and accepts.
Here’s the opening poem in the collection, “Moving Day:”
All that was left were the boxes of sermons
collected in her study, thirty years
of readings and reflections, prayers ready
to be gathered and stored away.
I could feel the weight of her words
as I carried the stack of boxes, unsorted,
to my car. With her body of work
tucked into my mid-sized trunk, I returned
for her size-five boots in the crux
of the doorway, dropped them in the backseat.
The breeze stroked the leaves above me,
Their rustling like a flock of small birds
Taking flight, perhaps frightened
By the muffled click of the trunk’s latch.
It’s a fine introductory poem for the collection, combining professional and personal elements of his mother’s life – the sermons and the size-five boots, the sermons tucked carefully into the trunk and the boots dropped in the backseat. While he recognizes it is the sermons that are the important things, the products of her mind and faith, it is the boots that truly bring home the magnitude of the loss he’s feeling, and he casually drops them in the backseat as if to deny the pain.
All of these poems are about the changes in relationships – with his father, his brother, even his dead mother, and perhaps most of all with himself. They are moving poems, thoughtful and thought-provoking, questioning but always coming back to a center. And they speak much about the importance of faith in a time of loss.
When one loses a parent, a number of transitions begin, some immediately. Some say the loss of a parent is when you truly become an adult. Death sets certain processes in motion – legal processes, family processes, personal processes. If there is a surviving parent, that relationship will change as well. Things can both ravel and unravel, and at the same time.
It is those ideas underlying the death of a parent that inform After the Ark: Poems by Luke Johnson. Johnson, whose poems have appeared in such publications as The New York Quarterly and Best Young Poets and who’s received awards from the Academy of American Poets and Atlantic Monthly, lost his mother to cancer when she was 54. Both of his parents were ministers, and so faith plays through these poems as well, a faith that simultaneously questions and accepts.
Here’s the opening poem in the collection, “Moving Day:”
All that was left were the boxes of sermons
collected in her study, thirty years
of readings and reflections, prayers ready
to be gathered and stored away.
I could feel the weight of her words
as I carried the stack of boxes, unsorted,
to my car. With her body of work
tucked into my mid-sized trunk, I returned
for her size-five boots in the crux
of the doorway, dropped them in the backseat.
The breeze stroked the leaves above me,
Their rustling like a flock of small birds
Taking flight, perhaps frightened
By the muffled click of the trunk’s latch.
It’s a fine introductory poem for the collection, combining professional and personal elements of his mother’s life – the sermons and the size-five boots, the sermons tucked carefully into the trunk and the boots dropped in the backseat. While he recognizes it is the sermons that are the important things, the products of her mind and faith, it is the boots that truly bring home the magnitude of the loss he’s feeling, and he casually drops them in the backseat as if to deny the pain.
All of these poems are about the changes in relationships – with his father, his brother, even his dead mother, and perhaps most of all with himself. They are moving poems, thoughtful and thought-provoking, questioning but always coming back to a center. And they speak much about the importance of faith in a time of loss.
March 22, 2014
sharp. a fantastic accumulation and catharsis that breaks in its last pages.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews