Mettlework

“It is a story of isolation and the quest for human connection. It is a story of family dynamics and gender dynamics—and the awareness it takes to break those patterns, if desired. It is a story of the vast, enmeshed systems that harm us here in the United States and the infinite decisions—tiny, colossal—we must make if we want to untangle and alleviate our oppression. The book's underlying question: how do we best take care of this world?” —Mary Ardery

“Johnson is at her best when writing about the impossible standards imposed on mothers and how norms of white middle-class domesticity rely on hierarchies of class and race …”—Emily Marshall

"Mettlework is a precise, lyrical and searching memoir that interrogates how we love the people who came before us even as they ruined the very land we live on. Johnson has a poet's heart and an oral storyteller's magnetism." —Emma Copley Eisenberg

Metabolics

finalist for the Oregon Book Award in poetry

“Metabolics is utterly its own unique experience, one that will leave the reader inspired to reexamine and reengage the deep strangeness of our daily lives. I am so grateful to have read this book.”—Elizabeth Bradfield

“These poems do just what we hope poems will do: they wake us up to our lives.” —Eleni Sikelianos

“With a keep perception and a lyricism that penetrates like light, Metabolics is a collection that will possess you.” —Janice Lee