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Inheritance
Inheritance is a black sensorium, a chapel of color and sound that speaks to spaciousness, surveillance, identity, desire, and transcendence. Influenced by everyday moments of Washington, DC living, the poems live outside of the outside and beyond the language of categorical difference, inviting anyone listening to listen a bit closer. Inheritance is about the self’s struggle with definition and assumption.
100 pages, Paperback
First published November 10, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
December 17, 2024
Gorgeously written, radically vulnerable, a wordsmith’s dream
June 2, 2021
Come get attuned. To muscadine and deer. Desire's blue dimension, red earth and the darkness of dirt. To hummingbirds who "are meant for summer, they swim in the air." To the "cicadas sounding out the future through repetition." To "The way you held the package of red beans from your brother back home," the eloquent silence of grandparents, and the "usness" lovers make. (Gosh, the love poems in this book!) Taylor Johnson has made a language of light, shining it on grief, music, family, hunger, the emptiness of money and the fullness of the pines, while traversing about in "the little boat / my body boat, hold for the unique one, the formless soul, the blue fire / that coaxes my being into being." What beauty.
January 31, 2023
absolutely beautiful.
July 7, 2023
These poems are incredibly rigorous in thought and craft and generous in language.
November 8, 2023
It took me a long time to get through this because the poems are so complex to me. I had to make myself sit down and read it. Each poem demanded a lot of my attention and thought and time, and I knew they deserved no less. But every time I sat down and granted them all that they deserved, I was always grateful I did.
These poems were such a good challenge because Taylor Johnson doesn't write in a linear manner. That is to say that their language isn't structured like sentences are--there aren't always clear subjects, verbs, and complete thoughts. There are a lot of fragments and snatches of thoughts that sit next to each other like neighbors in a collage. Normally, fragments can bother me. But Johnson is so damn deliberate and expressive in the way they weave these thoughts and half-thoughts together that I loved this use of language. It made the poems like lyrics, but if the music element-- the final piece that completes the partial thought--is something you have to make in your own head as the reader.
On a similar note, Johnson relies heavily on the space between language and thought, and trusts you to bridge the gap. (I'm pulling some of this language from "On My Way to You.") There is a lot of trust there, and also a lot of privacy--because Johnson isn't telling me everything about what it is to be them in whatever space they're inhabiting. They're trusting a) that I will Get It and b) that perhaps they themselves don't have to arrive upon concrete answers. There's a beautiful, wise restraint to that. I really respect it.
On a micro level, the use of language in this volume is just beyond. It's so creative. From the first poem, I was struck by how unique Johnson's voice is. That's part of why I took so long to read it--I had never read ideas conveyed the way Johnson conveys them, so I had to really sit with it and savor it. If I started pulling quotes here, I would be quoting the whole book, which absolutely shimmers with beauty that is at once blunt and opaque, pastoral and urban.
Thematically, I loved inhabiting the settings Johnson describes, and I see a really interesting tension between wanting to be present in those settings and present in a given body and wanting to transcend the physical into a felt sense. One poem that I'm thinking of now is "Pennsylvania Ave. SE," which conveys a very particular, liminal space of being nonbinary, in between desiring someone and desiring to be like them. In this poem and many others there is a wonderful tension between concrete language and settings--bike-riding and hot summers and people-watching--and abstract ideas of gender, capitalism, inner peace, big things we may want to either find or destroy. Johnson is using the poems, maybe, to find and/or destroy the frightening forces they're implicating.
I am eager to share Taylor Johnson with my loved ones, and I am eager to spend more time with their particular written voice as well: sparse but thoughtful, loving and critical, intimate but distant, grounded and transcendent, and wholly unlike any poet I've read before.
These poems were such a good challenge because Taylor Johnson doesn't write in a linear manner. That is to say that their language isn't structured like sentences are--there aren't always clear subjects, verbs, and complete thoughts. There are a lot of fragments and snatches of thoughts that sit next to each other like neighbors in a collage. Normally, fragments can bother me. But Johnson is so damn deliberate and expressive in the way they weave these thoughts and half-thoughts together that I loved this use of language. It made the poems like lyrics, but if the music element-- the final piece that completes the partial thought--is something you have to make in your own head as the reader.
On a similar note, Johnson relies heavily on the space between language and thought, and trusts you to bridge the gap. (I'm pulling some of this language from "On My Way to You.") There is a lot of trust there, and also a lot of privacy--because Johnson isn't telling me everything about what it is to be them in whatever space they're inhabiting. They're trusting a) that I will Get It and b) that perhaps they themselves don't have to arrive upon concrete answers. There's a beautiful, wise restraint to that. I really respect it.
On a micro level, the use of language in this volume is just beyond. It's so creative. From the first poem, I was struck by how unique Johnson's voice is. That's part of why I took so long to read it--I had never read ideas conveyed the way Johnson conveys them, so I had to really sit with it and savor it. If I started pulling quotes here, I would be quoting the whole book, which absolutely shimmers with beauty that is at once blunt and opaque, pastoral and urban.
Thematically, I loved inhabiting the settings Johnson describes, and I see a really interesting tension between wanting to be present in those settings and present in a given body and wanting to transcend the physical into a felt sense. One poem that I'm thinking of now is "Pennsylvania Ave. SE," which conveys a very particular, liminal space of being nonbinary, in between desiring someone and desiring to be like them. In this poem and many others there is a wonderful tension between concrete language and settings--bike-riding and hot summers and people-watching--and abstract ideas of gender, capitalism, inner peace, big things we may want to either find or destroy. Johnson is using the poems, maybe, to find and/or destroy the frightening forces they're implicating.
I am eager to share Taylor Johnson with my loved ones, and I am eager to spend more time with their particular written voice as well: sparse but thoughtful, loving and critical, intimate but distant, grounded and transcendent, and wholly unlike any poet I've read before.
January 23, 2021
Review by Julianna Björkstén, Assistant Poetry Editor and Book Reviewer October Hill Magazine
In its pursuit of definition, language closes off dualities, contradictions, and intersections. Poetry, however, is able to transcend these linguistic limitations. At its core, poetry is antithetical: It points to a moment, a feeling, or a concept that sits beyond the reach of language. It does this, paradoxically, with careful, precise diction. Good poetry creates space to access the ineffable while delighting in the words as they look and sound on the page. It is, then, an ideal medium for both presenting the multifaceted nature of identity, and for critiquing language’s inability to adequately express the plurality of the self.
Taylor Johnson’s debut collection, Inheritance, theorizes on and reifies these observations. Johnson’s impressive collection acts as a nexus for thinking about the ways that language, identity, and ownership collide. As a Black, trans person, Johnson’s own identity exists at an intersectional space. On the page, this yields a rhetoric of “liminality,” one that extends beyond language or ownership and into uncharted territory.
In Inheritance, dualities abound, as Johnson places conventionally opposed worlds side-by-side...[read the rest of the review in October Hill Magazine's Winter 2020 Issue]
In its pursuit of definition, language closes off dualities, contradictions, and intersections. Poetry, however, is able to transcend these linguistic limitations. At its core, poetry is antithetical: It points to a moment, a feeling, or a concept that sits beyond the reach of language. It does this, paradoxically, with careful, precise diction. Good poetry creates space to access the ineffable while delighting in the words as they look and sound on the page. It is, then, an ideal medium for both presenting the multifaceted nature of identity, and for critiquing language’s inability to adequately express the plurality of the self.
Taylor Johnson’s debut collection, Inheritance, theorizes on and reifies these observations. Johnson’s impressive collection acts as a nexus for thinking about the ways that language, identity, and ownership collide. As a Black, trans person, Johnson’s own identity exists at an intersectional space. On the page, this yields a rhetoric of “liminality,” one that extends beyond language or ownership and into uncharted territory.
In Inheritance, dualities abound, as Johnson places conventionally opposed worlds side-by-side...[read the rest of the review in October Hill Magazine's Winter 2020 Issue]
May 15, 2024
Sometimes I feel I understand poetry fairly well and then I read something new that shakes my confidence so profoundly. I think that’s what I love about poetry and what I love about this poetry from Taylor Johnson. He writes like the Afro and gay beat poets of the 50s and 60s are ghosts speaking through him. It’s visceral, sexual, touching, but in its tone also deeply personal to Johnson. It’s for us to enjoy, but we cannot suppliant to be apart of his life, just his poetry.
I particularly liked “W 177th & Broadway,” it comes after these deeply sexual and secure poems of lovers. But this poem is secure in its insecurity, as he is aware of his insecurities turning him on, “The city air hung humid/ above our charade... ” . It’s deeply self-critical but also godlike”... What need I could fill:/ to transubstaniate, to unravel?” Not to even mention the inherently godlike nature of being trans that is critical to this poem. This dichotic tension that I love in poets like Mayakovsky. I highly recommend this short collection to everyone.
I particularly liked “W 177th & Broadway,” it comes after these deeply sexual and secure poems of lovers. But this poem is secure in its insecurity, as he is aware of his insecurities turning him on, “The city air hung humid/ above our charade... ” . It’s deeply self-critical but also godlike”... What need I could fill:/ to transubstaniate, to unravel?” Not to even mention the inherently godlike nature of being trans that is critical to this poem. This dichotic tension that I love in poets like Mayakovsky. I highly recommend this short collection to everyone.
April 15, 2025
ohhhh boy this brought me back into poetry. I forgot poetry, I forgot!
every poem with the word desire or deer or house or woman or something about the particular humidity of the swamp that is DC I had to read at least 5 times.
I don’t know. The ability to see what you hope to be and what you already are in the streets or in the woods or a low lit house party. The familiarity of animality, the clarity of wanting something that puts you back in your body.
So beautiful.
every poem with the word desire or deer or house or woman or something about the particular humidity of the swamp that is DC I had to read at least 5 times.
I don’t know. The ability to see what you hope to be and what you already are in the streets or in the woods or a low lit house party. The familiarity of animality, the clarity of wanting something that puts you back in your body.
So beautiful.
February 1, 2025
What was rampant in me was not wisteria. Perhaps decay, or loss of reflection.
No one like me gets old, or so I thought, even as I watched the days fade into each other.
-- "Nocturne"
Sometimes language is the animal, sometimes it's the gun.
-- "This Sign Is Available"
---
Full disclosure, I'm really not a fan of this style of "academic" poetry, so I got pretty bored midway through.
No one like me gets old, or so I thought, even as I watched the days fade into each other.
-- "Nocturne"
Sometimes language is the animal, sometimes it's the gun.
-- "This Sign Is Available"
---
Full disclosure, I'm really not a fan of this style of "academic" poetry, so I got pretty bored midway through.
March 19, 2021
Each of these poems is a mouthful in the best possible sense. The result is not necessarily musicality but a slowing down, an articulation that feels like the basis for the active listening and reflexivity at the heart of most of the poems.
November 21, 2023
“you were an appeal to my loneliness
not it’s end.”
🤯
Taylor Johnson is a powerful poet. Several poems and lines had to be reread immediately.
not it’s end.”
🤯
Taylor Johnson is a powerful poet. Several poems and lines had to be reread immediately.
May 19, 2025
Desire is a blue dimension.
December 7, 2023
Conjecture On The Nature Of Inconvenience (p. 48)
"If I pull the hanged man's card on new year's eve, then I am tell-
ing on myself.
If the body is said to be either or , then I am telling on
myself.
If the body is said to be either or , then there is a liminal-
ity unaccounted for.
If there is an unaccounted liminality, then there is a disposses-
sion.
If there is a body dispossessed, then there is a hole in the
language.
If there is a hole in the language, then I am slipping through,
stealing away.
If I am slipping, then I;m not on my way anywhere.
If I'm not on my way anywhere, then I can be a kind of futility.
If I am futile, then I am a fugitive against the idea of linear
movement.
If I am against movement, then I am against passing for.
If I am passing, then I am a boy.
If I am a boy, then I am holding something stolen.
If I'm assumed to be holding something stolen, then I am in an
elevator in new york.
If I'm in an elevator in new york, then I am about to look down
the throat of a gun.
If the gun doesn't speak, then I'mstill here lucky.
If I'm lucky, then she wasn't crying when she called the cops on
me.
If the neighbor called the cops on me, then I never saw her that
morning.
If she never saw me, then I am a theory of myself.
If I am an unsubstantiated claim, then I am a figment of her
anxiety.
If I am a figment, then my death would be inconsequential.
If I didn't die, then she will send me flowers apologising for her
inconvenience.
If I was already an inconvenience to the language, then she is
right.
If she is right, then there is an elsewhere to which I belong.
If there is an elsewhere, then there is a clearing in the woods.
If there are woods, then there is a ground that abstains ruin.
If there is a ground, then there are bodies beneath it.
If the bodies know my name, then I am said to be protected.
If I am spoken for, then I could've died a number of times.
If I am still here, then I am speaking for the dirt.
If there is dirt, then there is my mouth wet and ripe with
questions."
"If I pull the hanged man's card on new year's eve, then I am tell-
ing on myself.
If the body is said to be either or , then I am telling on
myself.
If the body is said to be either or , then there is a liminal-
ity unaccounted for.
If there is an unaccounted liminality, then there is a disposses-
sion.
If there is a body dispossessed, then there is a hole in the
language.
If there is a hole in the language, then I am slipping through,
stealing away.
If I am slipping, then I;m not on my way anywhere.
If I'm not on my way anywhere, then I can be a kind of futility.
If I am futile, then I am a fugitive against the idea of linear
movement.
If I am against movement, then I am against passing for.
If I am passing, then I am a boy.
If I am a boy, then I am holding something stolen.
If I'm assumed to be holding something stolen, then I am in an
elevator in new york.
If I'm in an elevator in new york, then I am about to look down
the throat of a gun.
If the gun doesn't speak, then I'm
If I'm lucky, then she wasn't crying when she called the cops on
me.
If the neighbor called the cops on me, then I never saw her that
morning.
If she never saw me, then I am a theory of myself.
If I am an unsubstantiated claim, then I am a figment of her
anxiety.
If I am a figment, then my death would be inconsequential.
If I didn't die, then she will send me flowers apologising for her
inconvenience.
If I was already an inconvenience to the language, then she is
right.
If she is right, then there is an elsewhere to which I belong.
If there is an elsewhere, then there is a clearing in the woods.
If there are woods, then there is a ground that abstains ruin.
If there is a ground, then there are bodies beneath it.
If the bodies know my name, then I am said to be protected.
If I am spoken for, then I could've died a number of times.
If I am still here, then I am speaking for the dirt.
If there is dirt, then there is my mouth wet and ripe with
questions."
April 29, 2021
At turns profound and mundane, this collection from Taylor Johnson explores the trans experience as well as the poet’s forebears (particularly grandparents) and a life lived in DC and Louisiana. The poems were a bit uneven, but at its best Inheritance is a moving and beautiful collection.
April 9, 2024
"And in the corner two women dancing on each other, / almost identically dressed ... I don't want to be either of them, I / want to be what's between them. Impossible desire in ecstatic physicality. Heat made tangible. / Yes opening to yes ... I'm wrecked. I'm / her tool. I'm a tower of light. An ancient loss of control."
"Is it too much to ask to be remade I who've just begun?"
"There are a number of feelings you are in need of."
"I am staying in the woods longer and learning self-reliance from the trees."
"I write to understand stillness, not to praise."
"To love like him is to be a student of / regret ... I wept in the winter when I left my / woman, I wept in the heat when she came back."
"I'm building the boat, / the same way I'd build a new love— / looking ahead at the terrain."
"I weep as my father in devotion and anger."
"I'm not in love with anyone, but what else can I call the way I buried my face in the purple salvia plant in the bouquet I got from the farm share. Everything unfolds magnificent around me."
"Is it too much to ask to be remade I who've just begun?"
"There are a number of feelings you are in need of."
"I am staying in the woods longer and learning self-reliance from the trees."
"I write to understand stillness, not to praise."
"To love like him is to be a student of / regret ... I wept in the winter when I left my / woman, I wept in the heat when she came back."
"I'm building the boat, / the same way I'd build a new love— / looking ahead at the terrain."
"I weep as my father in devotion and anger."
"I'm not in love with anyone, but what else can I call the way I buried my face in the purple salvia plant in the bouquet I got from the farm share. Everything unfolds magnificent around me."
November 22, 2022
Themes I appreciated in these poems: gender, class, living in DC but not how me and my friends lived in DC, identity, belonging (and not).
"Similes"
"Nothing is like jail. Nothing resembles it or approximates it. Nothing is like being detained, except for being detained. Nothing is slower than time then. Time is measured between who you were before being handcuffed and who you'll be stumbling out the jail onto the small-town street with no one to talk to. Who you'll be is measuring each breath that isn't metallic air. How is the air after the bruise on your rib? It's nothing like air. Nothing is like being alone when you shouldn't be alone. Alone is the fear of being watched and not speaking for weeks. Nothing is like a cage but a cage, I tell this to myself. Knowing where I've been. Knowing where I have to go."
"Similes"
"Nothing is like jail. Nothing resembles it or approximates it. Nothing is like being detained, except for being detained. Nothing is slower than time then. Time is measured between who you were before being handcuffed and who you'll be stumbling out the jail onto the small-town street with no one to talk to. Who you'll be is measuring each breath that isn't metallic air. How is the air after the bruise on your rib? It's nothing like air. Nothing is like being alone when you shouldn't be alone. Alone is the fear of being watched and not speaking for weeks. Nothing is like a cage but a cage, I tell this to myself. Knowing where I've been. Knowing where I have to go."
February 19, 2023
"I'm not in love with anyone, and so I have no one to whisper this to."
Reading Inheritance by Taylor Johnson feels like kissing. The closeness to language, the tension of memory, and the cohesion of theme throughout the collection created such tangible intimacy. This collection blankets you in warmth and understanding—Johnson's way of weaving through society, relationships, the self, and the natural world made me wish to witness the world brand new.
"I work for your weight / against me."
Inheritance is a reminder that the world is sensual and alive even when we are alone. Even when all we can do is listen deeply and breathe and hold and touch and know and want and grow and leave. I will be dreaming of this collection for years to come.
Reading Inheritance by Taylor Johnson feels like kissing. The closeness to language, the tension of memory, and the cohesion of theme throughout the collection created such tangible intimacy. This collection blankets you in warmth and understanding—Johnson's way of weaving through society, relationships, the self, and the natural world made me wish to witness the world brand new.
"I work for your weight / against me."
Inheritance is a reminder that the world is sensual and alive even when we are alone. Even when all we can do is listen deeply and breathe and hold and touch and know and want and grow and leave. I will be dreaming of this collection for years to come.
February 27, 2023
'What was rampant in me was not wisteria. Perhaps decay, or loss of reflection.
No one like me gets old, or so I thought, even as I watched the days fade into each other.
Was I no one? Which phrase means a grown-up girl: mica-gilded; pure myth; gone?
Thoreau might say I was trying to find the door to nothingness, that the wild was already in me.
However, I walked out my bed to find my skin, only to return moondrunk, bramble-laden,
stripped to sinew, a broken syntax. No denying how I got here, I laid down among the tall grass
and came up a specter. I came up everywhere.'
('Nocturne')
No one like me gets old, or so I thought, even as I watched the days fade into each other.
Was I no one? Which phrase means a grown-up girl: mica-gilded; pure myth; gone?
Thoreau might say I was trying to find the door to nothingness, that the wild was already in me.
However, I walked out my bed to find my skin, only to return moondrunk, bramble-laden,
stripped to sinew, a broken syntax. No denying how I got here, I laid down among the tall grass
and came up a specter. I came up everywhere.'
('Nocturne')
August 5, 2023
d a m
“What gender should I be in this sound? I want you to ask you who are still here, when I hear some trap music some shit I never heard? and in the corner two women dancing on each other almost identically dressed, whining one's ass up on the other. I don't want to be either of them, I want to be what's between them. Impossible desire in ecstatic physicality. Heat made tangible.
Yes opening to yes. When my woman puts her ass on me, my feelings are hurt. I'm wrecked. I'm her tool. I'm a tower of light. An ancient loss of control. Impossible desire. What sound is that?”
“What gender should I be in this sound? I want you to ask you who are still here, when I hear some trap music some shit I never heard? and in the corner two women dancing on each other almost identically dressed, whining one's ass up on the other. I don't want to be either of them, I want to be what's between them. Impossible desire in ecstatic physicality. Heat made tangible.
Yes opening to yes. When my woman puts her ass on me, my feelings are hurt. I'm wrecked. I'm her tool. I'm a tower of light. An ancient loss of control. Impossible desire. What sound is that?”
Read
May 14, 2025i’m gonna be so honest gang, i read this as an epub from a…totally legal source…with no way to annotate or even mark your spot because the copy they had in the school bookstore was like $20 and i wasn’t about to pay $20 for like 80 pages of poetry so even though i know i read the whole thing and taylor johnson literally came to our class and i literally spoke to him (and he was lovely by the way), i hardly remember anything. that’s on me though. shoulda probably just forked over the money to have the physical copy so i could pay attention better but ah well.
May 15, 2021
4 stars
There's an impressive maturity to Johnson's poems, and also a certain stillness to their work that really resonated with me. The poem "June DC" is a great example and the standout poem in the collection--prose poetry done right! There's a nice variety of form on display throughout the collection though, not just prose poems. Really looking forward to reading more from Johnson in the future.
There's an impressive maturity to Johnson's poems, and also a certain stillness to their work that really resonated with me. The poem "June DC" is a great example and the standout poem in the collection--prose poetry done right! There's a nice variety of form on display throughout the collection though, not just prose poems. Really looking forward to reading more from Johnson in the future.
November 12, 2024
"Which phrase might mean a grown-up girl: mica-gilded; pure myth; gone?
Thoreau might say I was trying to find the door to nothingness, that the wild was already in me.
However, I walked out my door to find my skin, only to return moondrunk, bramble-laden,
stripped to sinew, a broken syntax... I laid down among the tall grass
and came up a specter. I came up everywhere."
Love the i growing like weeds amid broken language.
Thoreau might say I was trying to find the door to nothingness, that the wild was already in me.
However, I walked out my door to find my skin, only to return moondrunk, bramble-laden,
stripped to sinew, a broken syntax... I laid down among the tall grass
and came up a specter. I came up everywhere."
Love the i growing like weeds amid broken language.
November 29, 2022
This collection had quite a few poems that I struggled with as they seemed to contain many thoughts and ideas in a single poem at a time. That said, there was quite a bit that hit just right. The author is nonbinary and I found myself relating to quite a bit. Definitely will be saving a few of them to refer back to in the future.
February 19, 2023
"The way the field expands is a terror is/ the liminal space we speak of when we speak on/ the going between. I'm saying it the same again: nothing / here is tethered to nothing else where the here is/ the body, mine." Beautiful and utterly unique poetry by Taylor Johnson, both intensely personal and insightful about the world and human condition.
March 10, 2021
Taylor Johnson writes the kind of poems that take you somewhere. They hold you in their heart and listen to you.
Favorites: “Conjecture On The Nature of Inconvenience” // “Club 2718” // “Trans Is Against Nostalgia”
Favorites: “Conjecture On The Nature of Inconvenience” // “Club 2718” // “Trans Is Against Nostalgia”
May 16, 2022
I couldn't find words for this so here are the ones that resonated most with me (from a review by J. Evans):
"Poetry of listening and watching."
"Present through a solitude and longing."
"the rigor and play of their poetry"
"Warmth... honest and unsentimental benevolence of these poems..."
"Poetry of listening and watching."
"Present through a solitude and longing."
"the rigor and play of their poetry"
"Warmth... honest and unsentimental benevolence of these poems..."
June 13, 2024
“O, to call your name only, to be that sure.”
“All night you eyed the man I wanted to be;
my jaw flexed tight.
what you want under him,
I put on to amuse - I, your worked
supplicant. Yes, love is looking away.”
“All night you eyed the man I wanted to be;
my jaw flexed tight.
what you want under him,
I put on to amuse - I, your worked
supplicant. Yes, love is looking away.”
December 25, 2024
Poetry Unbound recently featured a poem from Inheritance (google & listen) and I was spellbound by its beauty and poignancy. The collection lives up to the offering on the podcast; I could tell from the first poem I was reading something special.
December 8, 2020
Taylor’s got the goods
Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews