A Review Of Before The 21st By Henry Stobbs Of The Ohio Poetry Association
	A Review Of Before The 21st By M. E. Buchinger Bodwell For The Ibbeston Street Update

 

Before the 21st: (Selected Poems 1990-1999) 
by Christina L. Johnson

Copyright 2002
Ginninderra Press Of Canberra, Australia 
ISBN 1-74027-120-3

Before the 21st, a collection of poems by Christina L. Johnson, reads like a promise to oneself -- a promise, on the cusp of a new millenium, to capture one’s poetry in print. 

Johnson’s writing is very much about “life-in-time”, to borrow a phrase from Jacques Barzun. A sense of keepsaking infuses these poems; the impulse to remark on and hold in words moments or scenes which is peculiar to poets seems particularly raw in this collection. Reading Johnson, I am reminded of Goethe’s poet in Faust when he asks: “Who makes you feel the glowing sunset hours?/Who scatters the fairest springtime flowers/Over the Beloved’s path?..” 

Johnson is a freelance writer and photographer -- attention to the features of the landscape and the light is her business. In general, her language has all the subtlety of a photograph, but the images can be haunting.

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M.E. Buchinger Bodwell is an Assistant Professor of English at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston. This past year, her poems were published in Penumbra, Dasoke, and the Ibbetson Street Journal. As an applied linguist, her research interests include teacher inquiry, pedagogy, and discourse acquisition.