Eugene weekly., July 28, 2005, Page 35, Image 35

BY LOIS WADSWORTH
Lively Organic Farm
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600 River Loop #2
(3 miles North of Beltline off River Road)
461-2737
Native
Son
Poems of travel and home
PITCHING MY TENT ON SLANTED
GROUND: Selected Poems by David
Johnson. Walking Bird Press, 2005. Paperback, $15.
Order online at www.walkingbirdpress.com or by
mail to 8016 N. Ida Ave. #12, Portland, OR 97203.
L
ongtime EW contributing writer and
former staff writer, poet and journal-
ist David Johnson is that rare bird: a
native Eugenean. He lives in Portland now
but resided in Blagoveshchensk, Russia, for
several years. Even as a citizen of the world,
Johnson is an Oregonian through and
through, as many of the poems in this new
collection attest.
An ardent lover of the natural wonders of
the Northwest, Johnson’s work draws on an
extensive knowledge of Oregon history and
its native people. A storyteller at heart, he
laces narratives of his own and his family’s
life with loving detail, honoring great-grand-
parents, grandparents, his father Paul and his
late mother, Lois. In the insightful photo-
graph on the back cover of Pitching My Tent,
it’s clear Johnson has weathered the sudden
storms that have come his way with the flair
of an artist, much as the weathered boards he
leans against proudly exhibit their fine-
grained, gnarled beauty.
In the first of the collection’s six sections,
Moving On, the poems speak of family,
childhood remembered and first thoughts.
On a Saturday afternoon playing “Cowboys
and Indians” after watching TV cowboy
Lash Larue and others “gallop into black and
white sunsets,” the poet recalls the lesson
learned. With “a tin star pinned/ to my lone-
some heart or a Wind River breeze/ fluttering
my turkey-feathered headdress,/ I knew with
red-rock certainty/ that right was right, honor
non-negotiable,/ and purple sage my duty to
defend/ until suppertime.”
The most tender short poem comes in
section two, Casting Without a Hook:
CINDY MUNTWYLER, 2005
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“Reconciliation”
He kisses tears from her eyes
as delicately, as eagerly
as an antelope’s tongue
grazes a salt lick
on the west slope
of Hart Mountain.
Section five, Beyond the Taiga, include
poems written while Johnson lived in
Russia. He shows his respect for two master
Russian poets, Anna Akhmatova (“Anna’s
Apartment”) and Yevgeny Yevtushenko
(“The Lookout Remembers Yevtushenko”).
“Down at the end of Lenin Street” describes
the view “a kilometer above the conflu-
ence/ of the Zeya and Amur Rivers” in this
verse:
On this brittle morning, in a derelict ship-
yard
at the end of the cluttered spit,
dry-docked, rust-freckled freighters
lean against each other like gloomy
drunks
out of work, out of vodka.
And in the final section, Bands of Light, a
poem called “Footpaths” recalls Cherokee
moccasins on the Trail of Tears in an exhibit
at the Smithsonian and a high-top shoe in a
Gordon Parks photograph. The poem ends
with these heart-breaking lines:
And in the Holocaust Museum
matte black boots and shoes are heaped
in a mound near a wooden boxcar
that takes us all, barefooted,
to Treblinka
A collection worthy of many readings,
Pitching My Tent on Slanted Ground will be
the object of celebration at 4 pm Sunday,
Aug. 7 at Tsunami Books. Johnson, also co-
author with Erik Muller and Peter Jensen of
a collaborative book of poetry, Confluence,
will read, sign books and chat with friends
and admirers. Be there.
ew
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BOOK NOTES (July 28 - Aug. 11): Be sure to catch Barry Lopez’ salmon essay in the
summer issue of Granta. … Literary Arts named Elizabeth Burnett its new executive di-
rector, effective July 1. … Edith Mirante (Down the Rat Hole) reads at 7:30 pm on 7/28 in
Powell’s on Burnside. …Christopher Sorrentino (Trance) reads at 7:30 pm on 7/28,
Powell’s on Hawthorne, Portland. …Eugene writer Judy Berg (The Otter Spirit) reads at 6
pm on 7/29 at the Book Mine, 702 Main Street, Cottage Grove. …Mark Helprin (Freddy and
Fredericka) reads at 4 pm 7/31 in Powell’s on Burnside. …Novelist Josh Emmons (The Loss
of Leon Meed) reads at 7:30 pm on 8/4 in Powell’s on Hawthorne. … Willamette Writers
Conference, August 5-7, in Portland. Google will take you to the conference website. …Poet
David Johnson (Pitching My Tent on Slanted Ground) reads at 4 pm on 8/7 in Tsunami
Books. …Brian Francis (The Secret Fruit of Peter Paddington) reads at 7:30 pm on 8/8 in
Powell’s on Burnside. …Alafair Burke (Close Case) reads from her third mystery set in
Portland at 7:30 pm in Powell’s on Burside. Authentic main character, Deputy D.A.
Samantha Kincaid, makes Burke’s new novel a must-read. Burke’s father is crime writer
James Lee Burke, and she is a former Portland deputy district attorney who loves the city.
JULY 28, 2005 35