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The poems in Naming the Afternoon, Julia Johnson’s first collection, gather naturally together in three sections that tackle the subjects of Time, Eternity, and Language. The poems, influenced by Johnson’s New Orleans upbringing but not drawn from any specific place, are mysterious yet inhabit a world of reason and explanation. Even though the world may seem distant and strange, it is composed of familiar elements — a kitchen, a violin, a purse. The collection focuses on images and feelings and has an underlying sense of urgency to name the passing moment, which is over in an instant, as soon as the “soup [has] finished shaking in the bowl of a spoon.”
In this remarkably mature debut, Johnson has created poems that are intelligent, haunting, evocative, and instructive.
. . . It’s the call of feeling, when everything
is dark, eyes are wide as pools.
It’s always night. When a man shuffling down
the street is really the wind,
when a door closing is a clap.
It is never the time to go to sleep.
Touching walls, almost moving them,
measuring every room,
you feel everything around you,
the air in your face, the pages of a book.
You create the story under your fingertips.
The woman at the surface is calling your name,
but only the current
guides you to her.
Selection from “Blind Swimmer” published in Naming the Afternoon by Julia Johnson. Copyright © 2002 by Julia Johnson. All rights reserved.
A Henry Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia and twice winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize, Julia Johnson has published poems in such journals as Third Coast, Eclipse, 64, Poetry International, and New Orleans Review. She taught English as a second language in Pusan, South Korea, and was assistant director of the creative writing program at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. She is an assistant professor of English at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.
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