Roxane Beth Johnson
Open Source (Poems from “Hammer & Consort”)
Horse History
My father said he was a horse:
strong, stupid, black.
He used to make a fist
like a colt’s muscled knee
when he spoke such verities.
Two for Phil (“Sometimes, We Tremble”)
Roxane Beth Johnson’s first book of poetry, Jubilee, won the Philip Levine Award for Poetry and was published by Anhinga Press. In awarding the prize, Levine commented: “These luminous poems depict a world I never knew—or knew as a child and since forgot—and they do so with the authority of a totally mature voice. The artistry that unifies this collection is so perfect it is almost invisible. Altogether an amazing debut.”
Here’s a poem from Jubilee:
The Prose of the World
Roxane Beth Johnson’s first book of poetry, “Jubilee,” won the Philip Levine Award for Poetry and was published by Anhinga Press, 2006. Here’s one of our favorite poems from that collection: