Snapshots from Memory by Jo Johnson

Snapshots from Memory by Jo Johnson

Poems of death, loss, and memory rendered in startling, and startlingly engaging, language and imagery.

The closing poem in Myra Malkin's collection SUSNSET GRAND COUTURIER plays with the tale that Sir Walter Raleigh's widow kept his embalmed head as a literal memento mori, and this is a perfect coda for a work dealing with death, loss, and memory in startling, and often startlingly engaging, fashion. To say that many of her poems are inspired by wide array of authors, artists, historical figures, and intellectuals (including her title, taken from Pound's Cantos) is true and evidence of her deep immersion in culture, but these are merely points of departure for her own very original poetic excursions. Penetrating but never ponderous, serious but never self-serious, these are poems of sensitivity, intellectual heft and aesthetic wonder.

Poetry.