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How to Catch a Falling Knife
Like an album of photographic negatives, this book is transformed by light, inhabited by family, illness, mortality, and faith. Daniel Johnson hammers plain speech into exquisite song that is celebratory, mysterious, and elegiac. This transfixing collection resounds with what's left unsaid.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 28, 2019
My favorite from this collection: Do Unto Others.
May 11, 2012
Daniel Johnson's debut collection has a ringing, quiet, sparse and craftsmanlike mastery about it. I'd call it a confessional collection but that would be too limiting--his talent lies in the empty space in an George Oppen kind of way, though he is no objectivist. His poem "Ad Infinitum" is an example of what this guy can do with words:
"With a cotton towel white as the sun,
God is scratching grit from the pearl
handle of a pawnshop pistol.
He spit-shines the snub barrel
and stock, then stops dead--stares into space.
He gets up from his chair,
goes nowhere, sits back down.
In his ears, ten thousand church bells.
A cloud of whispers like distant surf.
He scours the tarnished trigger,
kicks open the chamber, spinning
now like a roulette wheel.."
These days I rarely find a book of poetry that after leafing through I will immediately buy, but this was one of them. It has the purity of a real wordsmith and a sort of porcelain ring, a sound between the silence of pregnant pauses. Absolutely recommended.
"With a cotton towel white as the sun,
God is scratching grit from the pearl
handle of a pawnshop pistol.
He spit-shines the snub barrel
and stock, then stops dead--stares into space.
He gets up from his chair,
goes nowhere, sits back down.
In his ears, ten thousand church bells.
A cloud of whispers like distant surf.
He scours the tarnished trigger,
kicks open the chamber, spinning
now like a roulette wheel.."
These days I rarely find a book of poetry that after leafing through I will immediately buy, but this was one of them. It has the purity of a real wordsmith and a sort of porcelain ring, a sound between the silence of pregnant pauses. Absolutely recommended.
November 14, 2012
A wonderful collection of poetry! Beautiful, resonant and also playful. Daniel Johnson uses image as the engine for most of his poems, but unlike many writers who support a poem's weight on images, the sound and syntax remain gorgeous. The poems conjure traces of a difficult childhood, but there's a sense of optimism and joy in this work, rare in an age when tragedy is often picked over redemption. All-in-all, I found the collection to be inspiring.
July 28, 2011
I am so torn between three and four stars on this collection. I think I would settle for three and a half if given that choice (which is something I really wish goodreads would change). I loved the voice for the most part. I loved the quiet rule of nostalgia mixed with the sharp yet somehow expected shock that nostalgia is imprecise.
What I did not like so much is that it didn't always feel coherent as a collection. Sometimes it felt a bit directionless. Yet, at the same time, I also felt that there was a depth I wasn't quite reaching all of the time. It definitely deserves a repeat reading as does all good poetry - maybe that will push it up to four stars.
What I did not like so much is that it didn't always feel coherent as a collection. Sometimes it felt a bit directionless. Yet, at the same time, I also felt that there was a depth I wasn't quite reaching all of the time. It definitely deserves a repeat reading as does all good poetry - maybe that will push it up to four stars.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews