Jenny Johnson is the author of In Full Velvet (Sarabande Books, 2017). Her poems and essays appear in American Poetry Review, BOMB Magazine, The Georgia Review, and The New York Times. Her honors include a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University and a NEA Fellowship. Her work has been supported by the Blue Mountain Center, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo. Before teaching at the university level, she taught middle and high school English in San Francisco. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at West Virginia University, and she is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University’s low-residency MFA program.
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The Best American Poetry 2012From"Aria"
A far cry. Epistrophy. A refusal.
A nightingale is recorded in a field
where finally we meet to touch and sleep.
A nightingale attests
as bombers buzz and whir
overhead enroute to raid.
We meet undercover of brush and dust.
We meet to revise what we heard.
The year I can’t tell you. The past restages
the future. Palindrome we can’t resolve.
But the coded trill a fever ascending,
a Markov chain, discrete equation,
generative pulse, sweet arrest,
bronchial junction, harmonic jam.
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Troubling the LineTrans and Genderqueer Poetry and PoeticsFrom"James River"
You are the wren scavenging for the husks of beetles.
I am the trout poking through river rocks,
the head of a copperhead slipping past,
the shadow of what you asked for turning to husk.
I am an open parachute, breeze billowing through.
You are the wren scavenging for the husks of beetles,
Now, I am flotsam poking through river rocks,
the detached head of a copperhead, snagged on rocks.
During recess, I remember, the parachute in my hands,
an open shadow, breeze billowing through.
When everyone pulled the chute upward to run beneath,
I was flotsam poking through river rocks,
the undulating lead blue shadows.
The parachute, faded indigo, was sweaty in my hands;
tucked beneath, one might feel whole
when everyone pulled the chute upward to run beneath.
Troubling the Line:Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics -
New England ReviewVol. 34, Nos. 3-4From"In Full Velvet"
It’s also true that some whitetails never lose their velvet.
Hunters raise their eyebrows calling them atypical,
antlered does, cactus bucks, monsters, shirkers,
ghosts, raggedy-horn freaks, because they lead
long solitary lives, unweathered
by the rutting season, because their antlers
are covered permanently in a skin
that most bucks shed in late summer,
because their velvet horns spike and slope
backwards, never hardening to pure bone,
growing ever more askew. A recent one slayed
at thirty points was described as having
stickers, kickers, and a whole lot of extra junk
full of blood, hot to the human touch.
New England Review:Vol. 34, Nos. 3-4- Print Books
"Jenny Johnson is a poet of deep compassion and mesmerizing range. Her work probes the complexities of queer identity and the body, weaving in the unexpected reaches of intimacy and communion found in nature, dreams and lost family histories . . . " —Olivia Kate Cerrone, The Rumpus
Selected Works
The rigor and formal poise of Jenny Johnson’s work creates an astounding emotional tension. There’s a sinuous, shape-shifting quality to this work that makes her poetic explorations of sex and selfhood all the more resonant. That subtle mastery of line and rhyme is a powerful complement to the poems’ organic commemorating, interrogating, searching. The judges were reminded of the virtuosity that characterizes a master like Elizabeth Bishop; of the profound and active depths, and how her poems ripple with need, and the desire for unity, communion, transformation.