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This collection by the award-winning writer Allan Johnston includes "Sable," a lengthy discourse based on the life of Phillis Wheatley, a well-known poet of the eighteenth century and a slave in the household of John Wheatley, a prominent Boston businessman. Wheatley's poems were published and distributed widely to affirm that Blacks could be both artistic and intellectual. The remainder of the book includes poems from previous books and chapbooks, including Tasks of Survival, Northport, Departures, Contingencies, and In a Window. Arranged as they are, the poems in the collection initially speak from an intimate stance but move to a more broadly reflective one while developing an increasing connectedness to the natural world. The collection ends with the sequence "Return," and its poems reflect upon time spent in the Sierra Nevada in California, the author's native state.
About the author
Allan Johnston earned his M.A. in Creative Writing and his Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Davis. His poems have appeared in over sixty journals, including Poetry, Poetry East, Rattle, and Rhino. He has published two full-length poetry collections (In a Window, Shanti Arts, 2018; and Tasks of Survival, 1996) and three chapbooks (Northport, 2010; Departures, 2013; Contingencies, 2015). He has received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, Pushcart Prize nominations (2009 and 2016), and First Prize in Poetry in the Outrider Press Literary Anthology competition (2010). He teaches writing and literature at Columbia College and DePaul University in Chicago, and reads or has read as a contributing poetry editor for Word River, r.kv.r.y, and the Illinois Emerging Poets competition. He is also co-editor of JPSE: Journal for the Philosophical Study of Education. His scholarly articles have appeared in Twentieth Century Literature, College Literature, and several other journals.
