Quiver

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California Book Awards Finalist

California Book Awards Finalist

"Luke Johnson cements his title as the uncontested master of shadow... Quiver will change the way you see."
—Patricia Smith, author of Unshuttered: Poems

“Quiver is a rare creation full of song and scar, authenticity and Old Testament mythology, of emotional complexity and witness."
—John Sibley Williams, Scale Model of a Country at Dawn

"The poems [in Quiver] are singing when they are stinging, scalding as they serve up something wildly fresh, slap after exquisite slap."
—Elaine Sexton, author of Drive

"...a work of glorious complexity."
—Ellen Bass

"...the most visceral, haunting book of poems I have read in years."
—Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate

Quiver is a book of reckoning, a book of ghosts, a book of lineal fracture and generational fatherlesness. It’s a visceral guide through boyhood into fatherhood. One that yields witness to trauma, erotic shames, brutalities and toxic masculinity, and in so doing, emerges with a speaker beginning to free himself. Patricia Smith said it best: “Quiver will change the way you see.”

...

“floodghost”
Mother couldn’t manage
what sated me, so she prayed:
sought in silence
a substance that’d soothe,
something familial with grace.
I groaned. Broke bodies
over blacktop’s pane, a bottom-
less well of blood. At seven
I smothered a frog and fed each leg
to my quivering sister
laughed while she choked out its skin. At twelve,
I pulled a pistol from under
the vacant shed and shoved
its shudder to a schoolboy’s temple, teased
while he wept in his piss.
And yet all along a Psalm, a satchel
of prayer: song. Mother making
contracts with the sky, while I
tore its pages to light a fire, warm
my hands around it. Radiant blue. Red
from a faraway pine.

About the Author

Reviews

“In Quiver—which, implausibly, is his first full volume—Luke Johnson cements his title as the uncontested master of shadow. These unnerving poems are the rustle in a vast and unrelenting dark, they are both salve and injury to the body, they are numbing slap and uneasy solace. The poet trains your eyes upon things you never wished to see—and holds you there, with chilling narrative and fierce lyric, until terror gives way to beauty. Am I saying...? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying—Quiver will change the way you see.”
—Patricia Smith, author of Unshuttered: Poems

“Quiver is a rare creation full of song and scar, authenticity and Old Testament mythology, of emotional complexity and witness. In a world where empathy is under threat of erasure, these poems of prophetic violence and harmful lineages take responsibility for themselves and remind us of our own responsibilities to each other. These poems both define and push against the edges of our shared American experience. At its heart, Quiver paints a multifaceted portrait of personal and communal betweenness. These poems choose to celebrate everything they touch. Even their own ghosts. Even that greater truth that always remains just slightly out of reach, that he refuses to stop reaching toward.”
—John Sibley Williams, author of Scale Model of a Country at Dawn

“In Quiver, Luke Johnson’s startling first book, the poems are singing when they are stinging, scalding as they serve up something wildly fresh, slap after exquisite slap. These poems show us how vulnerability bleeds, and what it sees when it does. There is no soft peddling this poetry, with its faith, its strife, and such uncommon artistry.”
—Elaine Sexton, author of Drive

“Quiver is the most visceral, haunting book of poems I have read in years. Johnson reimagines masculinity and is unafraid to unearth its dark elements, as father, son, and witness to the brutality and beauty in and around us. He writes, ‘Listen: When/I said boys have a storm inside,/this itch that fills our teeth, I/was sharing in secret. I meant/we have mothers who gift us ghosts,/our heads upon a trigger.’ This searing debut is a world of its own, built with fearlessness, tenderness, and grace. Take notice. Luke Johnson has arrived.”
—Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate

“In Quiver, Luke Johnson’s unforgettable debut poetry collection, he invokes The Old Testament, its fires, floods, and prophecies—to reckon with ‘all the ways a child drowns, like spiders trapped in spit.’ These are harrowing poems. Yet, at the heart of Johnson’s unsparing gaze lies enormous compassion—for the ghosts that haunt him, for the child self who carried ‘scars without witness.’ Quiver is a work of glorious complexity—brutal, lyrical, shot through with images that stop you in your tracks. But more than that, these poems look deeply at the ways the sins of the father are visited on successive generations and move toward breaking the cycle.”
—Ellen Bass

“Maybe you didn’t grow up in a family like the one in this book. I did, so let me assure you Luke Johnson got it right: the ferocious longing to pour understanding and generosity over their stories, to admit complicity, to intervene retroactively to protect something, to save someone, anyone. To smash beauty against the story again and again, trying to force it to alchemize into something that can be borne.”
—Patrick Donnelly, author of Little-Known Operas, Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin, and The Charge

“In Quiver, Luke Johnson’s inventive eye and sonorous voice seek to ‘pry the past apart.’ These poems pursue an allusive quietude beyond trauma and tragedy as wide-eyed, we witness a bruised boy become a tender father. Johnson’s impressive debut collection stares into sorrow, but doesn’t leave us to linger there. Instead, we swallow the darkness so we can breathe in the light.”
—Matt Rasmussen

"Scorching and illuminating, Johnson’s fearless language quivers like a flame—lighting a thin, hopeful path through the bleakness; flickering as the reader peers close, ready to burn."
—Ben Groner III in Whale Road Review

“Quiver is so ghost-haunted that the speakers’ identities themselves can become fluid, histories both personal and archetypal, a feat the poet carries out with effortless ease.”
—George Perreault in The Night Heron Barks

"[Quiver] dissects the journey from boyhood to adulthood and fatherhood whilst steering the reader through the choppy waters of self-realization. . . . I strongly urge you to read this powerfully written collection of poetry that is brimming with formidable craft and a dynamic narrative that engages the reader beyond the page."
—A. R. Arthur in Full House Literary

“Quiver is astonishing in its violent imagery and brutal emotional honesty. It depicts not only childhood trauma, but also the necessary resultant grief and recovery experienced by the adult that child has become. This is complex work.”
—Natalie Marino in Tupelo Quarterly

"Suffice to say, the hype around Quiver is well-deserved! It's brutal, but it's also tender. For every drop of blood or bodily fluid spilt or spent, there is a father whose love for his family is both absolute and absolutely beautiful. For every act of toxic masculinity, there is profound acknowledgement of the need for, and goodness in, masculine vulnerability."
—Frank Paino, author of Obscura

Published by Texas Review Press

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