Creaturely and Other Essays

by Devin Johnston

"The author puts forward a bracing theory of partial empathy....Johnston's searching book of thought-probes goes a long way toward allowing the reader the grounding that would allow him to make empathic contacts with the animals over which he ponders....Each time another animal becomes extinct a special and irretrievable way of looking at the world is gone....Perhaps the more people that read this book, the more this absence would be poignantly felt."— The Brooklyn Rail " Creaturely , like its subjects, eludes definition. It's a book of exquisite essays—or are they prose poems—that tessellate into something a meditation, perhaps, or a vision. Johnston's subject is at once the absolute otherness of the creatures with whom we share the world's everyday spaces—dogs, owls, mice, squirrels, crows—and the worth of our attempts to get to know them. Modest, calm, and beautiful, this is an exceptional book."—Robert Macfarlane Devin Johnston teaches at St. Louis University. He was named a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Sources , published by Turtle Point Press.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Nature

128 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2009

About the author

Born in Canton, New York, Devin Johnston grew up in Winston-Salem and received his PhD from the University of Chicago. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Far-Fetched (2015), Sources (2008), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Aversions (2004), and Telepathy (2001). His prose writing includes the critical study Precipitations: Contemporary American Poetry as Occult Practice (2002) and Creaturely and Other Essays (2009). A former poetry editor for the Chicago Review from 1995-2000, Johnston co-founded and co-edits Flood Editions with Michael O’Leary.

He lives in St. Louis and teaches at Saint Louis University.

Reviews

[Delia Rainey · Rating 4 out of 5]

nice tiny little nature essay collection. not going to lie, i selfishly searched through this thin volume for any speck of St. Louis descriptions and lore (since I live in south city and close to Tower Grove Park as well). it was sweet to read d.j.'s observations while also in my backyard, watching squirrels carry heavy fruits and nuts across telephone wires between brick houses. i loved reading abt the author's childhood growing up raising squirrels, sleeping sick with a squirrel on his chest, and then the contradiction of chapters later, he's throwing deer mice out into the dumpster. seasons change in the neighborhood, in the park, and chapters sweep up quickly, so there's a strong sense of renewal. i was quite interested in his thoughts on smell and aroma as memory while walking, how we "carry time with us", "the experience of it comes to us in plumes, waves, particles, and through impulses of the nervous system." i do wonder -- how can you write a book about walking around south city in St. Louis in the early 2000s, and not write about gentrification, abandoned buildings, and other aspects of post-industrial midwest city life? it's an interesting strategy to ignore all that, and focus only on the nature of the scene, describing each branch and animal's breadth in perfected poet's words.

[Katarzyna Bartoszynska · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an interesting case study in the definition of the prose poem as a genre. There is indeed something poetic about the way the ideas are strung together, a kind of precarious layering of associations that doesn't quite amount to an argument so much as a cluster of related thoughts that mutually shape and inflect each other. Some of the observations are really interesting and thought-provoking. I read the whole thing in one sitting (during a 45 minute bus ride), but wished that I'd spent more time on it and chewed over the ideas a bit more.

Simultaneously, however, I hated the language. Perhaps because it was described on the back as a series of prose poems, I expected the language to be incredibly beautiful, but instead it was... I can't even explain. A mealy mouthful of gristle. It was so weird, because there is something incredibly vivid and evocative in the imagery, but you're so keenly aware of the tortured medium that's conveying it to you. I don't know if this example can convey it, but perhaps?

"Dark begins to fall. Beside a picnic shelter, a drunk man vomits violently, doubled over in his camouflage jacket. The owls seem to pay him no heed; but suddenly, the female opens her wings and enters a long swoop, the field pouring away in her wake." (100)

I can see it all so clearly. But the alliteration of the violently vomiting man, the assonance of away and wake, honestly, even the amount of syllables - there is no musicality to it. Is it just me?

The whole book is like that. Slightly precious, a little bit cliché, and strangely ugly - but also kind of lovely and interesting in both its imagery and its ideas.

[jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

as mary oliver wrote in 'wild geese', " ... announcing your place in the family of things."

[Billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful little book about the everyday wildlife that surrounds us, even in the city. The perceptual gulf between species, what separates us and what unites us, is a main theme. Most of the action takes place in south St. Louis and surroundings. We look at owls (Great Horned and Barred), starlings, deer mice, mockingbirds, squirrels and more in a poet's light.

[Jillyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was yet another book that I was required to read for my English class. Like all the others, it has a theme of nature and natural systems. I found this to be a quick but poetic view point of nature and our surroundings. I'd recommend it to nature lovers. Anyone else might not enjoy this collection of essays.

[slp · Rating 3 out of 5]

After discussion, I am persuaded that the quietness of the language - which I admittedly liked, within a degree - is actually integral to its portrayals, and serves the text well in its crises of human representation of non-human realms.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A relaxing look at nature through the eyes of a well read, articulate author.