Telepathy

Rating:
Summary: Reading into Johnston.
Review: Why does Johnston seem to prefer such images as sleep and telepathy? What is he attempting to get to? I really want him to be doing something big, that's why I am asking...

I already have Alice Notley's "Disobedience" on the brain, so maybe I'm making comparisons between Notley and Johnston which simply don't hold, but I don't think so. The first line of Johnston's series-poem "Vacation" tells us that
I had not minded distance, not
traveling,
and my gut reaction is to think that he's going to attempt to take the reader there, and I immediately began to think he was going to start talking not only about his past, but the past in a larger way. I knew he was going to begin to attempt something similar to what Notley is doing with the Lascaux image. Do I detect pre-lapsarian sentiment? I think I do, and I think he wants to say we have a past which is revealed by the poet, if he/she would only search for them, in other words, a place where
words
may cede their place for passages.
since I myself am working on something in the way of a longer piece I now tend to critique how many writers I see lay something out, especially in a longer poem that is clearly segmented or has well-defined parts. I think that helps me decide what I would do when I see what another writer has done. But, I digress.
Attempting as I am to look at his book as a whole(this may be in error), I get all the way to the end of "Telepathy" and get to the St. Denis portion - which to my mind could almost be its own poem, or a more present piece or proper part on its own. I wonder, is he attempting to ascribe a belief system to this quest for origins? The truth is that I think metaphysical poetry as in Donne, Herbert etc. is pretty dated. I want to see an example of someone who is taking the metaphysical poetry idea and making it modern - or even postmodern. The yearning we have to know our connection with the cosmos isn't gone, and so it is still quite valid to see that expressed - in my mind at least.

I have unapologetically read into this book, it's only fair to tell you that, and then say - take that or leave it...