Books
Tangled in Vow & Beseech—Poetry
Tangled in Vow & Beseech was named a finalist in the MoonPath Press Sally Albiso Poetry Award and Michigan State University's Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. Jill's third full-length poetry collection is published by MoonPath Press.
Advance Praise:
"Tangled in Vow & Beseech vows to remember what we lose and beseeches us to embrace every moment. Throughout, McCabe Johnson writes intimately about family, nature, and animals, while also protesting the violences of religion, patriarchy, and racism. The lyricism of these poems carries the speaker into the 'clear slipstream of memory' to 'river me home. River me home.'"
—Craig Santos Perez, author of from incorporated territory [åmot], winner of the National Book Award for Poetry
"Through an array of poetic forms, Jill McCabe Johnson explores a deep sense of interconnectedness. These lyric tangles help us grapple with a life where the ugliest abuses of person and planet occur alongside a mother's love for her son, the grace of childhood innocence, the anniversary of a first kiss, and the understanding that “in this land” of “dogwood blossom, swordfern and fen” is 'everything' we need to 'believe.'"
—Derek Sheffield, author of Not for Luck, co-editor of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, and Poetry Editor of Terrain.org
Available via all online booksellers (Barnes & Noble, Hudson, Books-a-Million, and the usual suspects) plus select bookstores. Of course, I'd be delighted if you ordered through Darvill's and helped support my favorite indie bookstore. If you want a personalized copy for yourself or as a gift, just mention it in the notes and they'll ask me to sign it before they ship.
Advance Praise:
"Tangled in Vow & Beseech vows to remember what we lose and beseeches us to embrace every moment. Throughout, McCabe Johnson writes intimately about family, nature, and animals, while also protesting the violences of religion, patriarchy, and racism. The lyricism of these poems carries the speaker into the 'clear slipstream of memory' to 'river me home. River me home.'"
—Craig Santos Perez, author of from incorporated territory [åmot], winner of the National Book Award for Poetry
"Through an array of poetic forms, Jill McCabe Johnson explores a deep sense of interconnectedness. These lyric tangles help us grapple with a life where the ugliest abuses of person and planet occur alongside a mother's love for her son, the grace of childhood innocence, the anniversary of a first kiss, and the understanding that “in this land” of “dogwood blossom, swordfern and fen” is 'everything' we need to 'believe.'"
—Derek Sheffield, author of Not for Luck, co-editor of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, and Poetry Editor of Terrain.org
Available via all online booksellers (Barnes & Noble, Hudson, Books-a-Million, and the usual suspects) plus select bookstores. Of course, I'd be delighted if you ordered through Darvill's and helped support my favorite indie bookstore. If you want a personalized copy for yourself or as a gift, just mention it in the notes and they'll ask me to sign it before they ship.
Revolutions We'd Hoped We'd Outgrown—Poetry
"In one of her essays, Audre Lorde brilliantly redefines the erotic as the capacity to fully experience every dimension of life, from the sensual to the political. Revolutions We'd Hoped We'd Outgrown marvelously illustrates Lorde's vision. In poems that look at the toughness and tenderness of the body, the joy and dread of consciousness, and the complexities of the intimate and the social, Jill McCabe Johnson continually reaffirms "the lure of thrum, blossom, and burn." As moving as they are wry and steely, Johnson's poems are especially urgent in their explorations of the experiences of women in the world, and in their explorations of the psychic violence that pervades much of our daily awareness of contemporary life. Full of vivacity and brokenness, Revolutions We'd Hoped We'd Outgrown is a poetry that we very much need now."
—Rick Barot, author of Chord, winner of the PEN Open Book Award
"Jill McCabe Johnson walks through the world aware of both privilege and peril. The pace of her perambulations allows her to exercise (pun fully intended) her keen powers of observation, her formal dexterity, and her considerable lyrical gifts. Revolutions We'd Hoped We'd Outgrown is full of street smarts, hard-earned wisdom, and an emotional depth that shows us how to face all our revolutions, how to survive with 'deliverance and grace.'"
—Grace Bauer -- author of The Women At The Well and Nowhere All At Once
—Rick Barot, author of Chord, winner of the PEN Open Book Award
"Jill McCabe Johnson walks through the world aware of both privilege and peril. The pace of her perambulations allows her to exercise (pun fully intended) her keen powers of observation, her formal dexterity, and her considerable lyrical gifts. Revolutions We'd Hoped We'd Outgrown is full of street smarts, hard-earned wisdom, and an emotional depth that shows us how to face all our revolutions, how to survive with 'deliverance and grace.'"
—Grace Bauer -- author of The Women At The Well and Nowhere All At Once
In The Orcasonian, poetry critic Lin McNulty calls Revolutions We'd Hoped We'd Outgrown "luscious poetry," and adds, "Good poetry is a two-way street. The poet bares the soul and the reader is, then, awakened to a shared convergence of thought and emotion. When I picked up Revolutions for review, I opened randomly to a poem entitled 'Cavity.' I was so touched by her lines that it took me weeks to actually look at the rest of the book, choosing instead to “live with” this specific poem which so spoke to me. It caused me to look at things in my life that perhaps I had never examined before; every word resonated a newly-discovered, long-hidden truth."
Diary of the One Swelling Sea—Poetry
"In beautifully shaped, undulant, brief poems (or, one might call them entries in a daybook, bejeweled moments, cries from the heart) Jill McCabe Johnson asserts that the world, specifically the sea, is powerfully alive and available to us by way of the imagination. With precise and lyrical language both scientific and newly created for the occasion, Johnson faces the pain of degradation, yet also celebrates the joyous, nurturing nature of the sea. Diary of the One Swelling Sea is an intimate portrait of elements-become-flesh, rendered by a consciousness and heart large enough, and generous enough, to face the complexity of hard truths."
—Lia Purpura, author of Rough Likeness and King Baby
"Living on Orcas Island, Jill McCabe Johnson is a close neighbor to the sea. In her briny poems, she takes us even closer--letting us read the sea's diary. From sea ground to surface, we see the intimate, inside story. Careful observation, precise research, musical phrasing, and active imagining surge through these poems. Ninety-five percent of the earth's oceans remain unexplored. What better metaphor for the vast mysteries of our existence--the constant change, the contamination, the resurgence, the essence of life and death. In these elegant poems, forces huge as magma shove up and forces delicate as brittle stars taste changes in sea water. Marvelous."
--Peggy Shumaker, author of Gnawed Bones and Just Breathe Normally
"I'm in awe of what Jill McCabe Johnson has accomplished with this gorgeous, stunning book! These brief and modest poems invite the reader into the wise, yet innocent mind of the Sea who pines for his night mistress Mirror (the moon), and watches over his sea creature lovelies that dwell deep in the One Swelling Sea."
--David Huddle, author of Glory River and Black Snake at the Family Reunion
"...a lush peek into the life of the briny deep, channeled from a viewpoint we rarely consider. In a rhythmic ebb and flow, we experience what it looks like, what it feels like, to view life from the bottom up."
—Lin McNulty, Orcas Issues, February 11, 2013
"...in succinct daily entries, the poet channels the global ocean, spilling its thoughts on everything from penguins to tides to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Each entry is a broth of scientific precision and finely honed wordplay."
—Barbara Lloyd Michaels, Syndicated Columnist, January 28, 2013
—Lia Purpura, author of Rough Likeness and King Baby
"Living on Orcas Island, Jill McCabe Johnson is a close neighbor to the sea. In her briny poems, she takes us even closer--letting us read the sea's diary. From sea ground to surface, we see the intimate, inside story. Careful observation, precise research, musical phrasing, and active imagining surge through these poems. Ninety-five percent of the earth's oceans remain unexplored. What better metaphor for the vast mysteries of our existence--the constant change, the contamination, the resurgence, the essence of life and death. In these elegant poems, forces huge as magma shove up and forces delicate as brittle stars taste changes in sea water. Marvelous."
--Peggy Shumaker, author of Gnawed Bones and Just Breathe Normally
"I'm in awe of what Jill McCabe Johnson has accomplished with this gorgeous, stunning book! These brief and modest poems invite the reader into the wise, yet innocent mind of the Sea who pines for his night mistress Mirror (the moon), and watches over his sea creature lovelies that dwell deep in the One Swelling Sea."
--David Huddle, author of Glory River and Black Snake at the Family Reunion
"...a lush peek into the life of the briny deep, channeled from a viewpoint we rarely consider. In a rhythmic ebb and flow, we experience what it looks like, what it feels like, to view life from the bottom up."
—Lin McNulty, Orcas Issues, February 11, 2013
"...in succinct daily entries, the poet channels the global ocean, spilling its thoughts on everything from penguins to tides to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Each entry is a broth of scientific precision and finely honed wordplay."
—Barbara Lloyd Michaels, Syndicated Columnist, January 28, 2013
For Love of Orcas—Co-Editor
After the Southern Resident orca Tahlequah swam with her newly born dead calf for 17 days, scientists, poets, and writers responded to her grief and the plight of the endangered orcas in this moving anthology. Co-edited with Andrew Shattuck McBride, the anthology features poetry, essays, and environmental writing from more than ninety esteemed authors. Proceeds from the book benefit The SeaDoc Society for their efforts in helping restore the Southern Resident orca population. In 2020, the Nautilus Book Awards gave For Love of Orcas the Silver Award in Animals and Nature. Nautilus Book Awards recognizes "better books for a better world."
"The impassioned work in FOR LOVE OF ORCAS makes clear that orcas hold a special place in human lives and imaginations. These animals, identified as individuals by their markings and relationships, elicit concern and compassion, even love, as no mussel or candlefish or any other marine species smaller than a whale ever will. That is something to celebrate."
—Nancy Lord, author of Fishcamp, Beluga Days, Early Warning, and pH: A Novel, in The Anchorage Daily News, November 16, 2019
"The impassioned work in FOR LOVE OF ORCAS makes clear that orcas hold a special place in human lives and imaginations. These animals, identified as individuals by their markings and relationships, elicit concern and compassion, even love, as no mussel or candlefish or any other marine species smaller than a whale ever will. That is something to celebrate."
—Nancy Lord, author of Fishcamp, Beluga Days, Early Warning, and pH: A Novel, in The Anchorage Daily News, November 16, 2019
Pendulum—Poetry
A finalist for the Rane Arroyo Prize in Poetry, the poetry chapbook Pendulum, Seven Kitchens Press publisher Ron Mohring selected this collection to kick off their Summer Kitchen Series in 2018.
The poems in Pendulum reflect that phenomenon in physics where issues that sway toward one extreme—whether in politics, society, or our personal lives—generally swing to the other extreme before eventually finding balance and equilibrium. Or so we hope.
The poems in Pendulum reflect that phenomenon in physics where issues that sway toward one extreme—whether in politics, society, or our personal lives—generally swing to the other extreme before eventually finding balance and equilibrium. Or so we hope.
Borderlines—Nonfiction
About once a year, and by solicitation only, Sweet Publications publishes a limited-edition, handmade chapbook of poetry, creative nonfiction, or graphic nonfiction. Borderlines, a lyric essay, was selected by Sweet editor, co-founder, and writer extraordinaire, Ira Sukrungurang. The cover art was created especially for the book by Corinne Duchesne, and the hand-sewn "signatures" were by none other than Ira, the "hand model" pictured at left.
From the Publisher:
"Jill McCabe Johnson’s lyric essay, “Borderlines” dives into memory and water. In poetic prose, Johnson fragments a moment in her life, seeking to understand and uncover the innocence of childhood and the dark shadows that ever follow."
From the Publisher:
"Jill McCabe Johnson’s lyric essay, “Borderlines” dives into memory and water. In poetic prose, Johnson fragments a moment in her life, seeking to understand and uncover the innocence of childhood and the dark shadows that ever follow."
Being: What Makes a Man—Editor
"The men in this collection struggle with a prevailing stereotype as they look at manhood from every possible angle--issues of violence, war, solitude, sports, how to be a husband, son, father, friend. As they wrestle with words, they redefine what it is to be a man, and in the process they find new forms to reflect the changing attitudes and issues of our time. Eloquent, provocative, amusing, amazing--you pick the adjective--the pieces in this anthology may change the way we think and feel."
—Judith Kitchen, author of The Circus Train and Half in Shade
"After Macduff learns that his entire family has been killed, in MacBeth, he is overcome by anguish. “Dispute it like a man,” Malcolm urges, offering perhaps the only emotion that is legitimate for men to express. “I shall do so,” Macduff says, “But I must also feel it as a man,” thus revealing in a moment, that men have a far greater emotional repertoire. The stories, vignettes and poems in this volume reveal that range—pain, exhilaration, anguish, joy, confusion, yearning—thus courageously opening the door a little wider for the rest of us. Anyone who thinks men don't show their feelings needs to read this!"
—Michael Kimmel, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies
Executive Director, Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities
"I couldn't get wait to get my hands on this book. One gorgeous essay after another ... you have to read this book."
—Dinah Lenney, author of The Object Parade
—Judith Kitchen, author of The Circus Train and Half in Shade
"After Macduff learns that his entire family has been killed, in MacBeth, he is overcome by anguish. “Dispute it like a man,” Malcolm urges, offering perhaps the only emotion that is legitimate for men to express. “I shall do so,” Macduff says, “But I must also feel it as a man,” thus revealing in a moment, that men have a far greater emotional repertoire. The stories, vignettes and poems in this volume reveal that range—pain, exhilaration, anguish, joy, confusion, yearning—thus courageously opening the door a little wider for the rest of us. Anyone who thinks men don't show their feelings needs to read this!"
—Michael Kimmel, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies
Executive Director, Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities
"I couldn't get wait to get my hands on this book. One gorgeous essay after another ... you have to read this book."
—Dinah Lenney, author of The Object Parade
Becoming: What Makes a Woman—Editor
“Becoming: What Makes a Woman brings to life those remarkable moments, large and small, that transform an individual, steering us toward the lives we were meant to lead. An astonishing array of gifted writers explore intimacy, doubt, love, joy, and sorrow to form this exhilarating anthology. A rich and wonderful read.”
—Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life
"Beautifully conceived and organized, this collection unfolds much the way a woman's life reveals itself: slowly, gently, and sometimes painfully nudging our way into vision."
—Brenda Miller, author of Season of the Body and Listening Against the Stone
—Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life
"Beautifully conceived and organized, this collection unfolds much the way a woman's life reveals itself: slowly, gently, and sometimes painfully nudging our way into vision."
—Brenda Miller, author of Season of the Body and Listening Against the Stone