How the Dead Count: Poems

by Judith Johnson Sherwin, Judith Emlyn Johnson

1st softcover ed., 1978. Unread copy. Light edge wear.

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is still a powerful and moving book, unfortunately long out of print. Judith Johnson's poems are intense energy fields of connection.

[Will Cadle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently, I'm outside the group. Although Sherwin has a command of the language; and although she was a recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize (for Uranium Poems in 1968), an accolade in itself; and although she seems to have received high praise from critics and readers alike (based on the ratings here on Goodreads), it was not until I read the titular poem, which was placed almost at the end of the collection, that I connected with any of her poems or felt anything akin to what I consider poetry. That one poem, "How the Dead Count," in effect, at least for me, had a language to it that rises above the common speech and touches on something like a music of spoken words.

However, I realize the shortcoming is likely my own; a bias, no doubt. I like for a poem to keep me engaged in the same way that poetry managed to do when I first discovered it, which is to say I like it to elevate language through the "stitching and unstitching" of words, combined with subtle turns of phrase, meaty and memorable images, significant thoughts and feelings expressed with a simplicity that belies the depth of insight.

In short, I want to feel strongly enough about the poem that I want to memorize it. I seldom have that response with contemporary poetry. I might read a poem and think it works well enough, but I almost never want to return and read the poem again much less learn it by heart.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 J677h 1978