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Green
These poems tell the story of loss: loss of a father stolen by disease, loss of innocence. And while it could easily stop there this collection doesn’t. Instead, it gathers strength and finds its voice and its fight. With wonder and awe and some well-placed anger, we see these poems emerge on the other side with a bit of hope and even happiness.
- GenresPoetry
85 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2021
2 people are currently reading
32 people want to read
About the author
Melissa Fite Johnson
6 books56 followersMelissa Fite Johnson is the author of three full-length collections, most recently Midlife Abecedarian (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Melissa, a high school English teacher, is a poetry editor for The Weight, a journal for high school students, and Porcupine Lit, a journal for and by teachers. She and her husband live with their dogs in Lawrence, KS, where she co-hosts the Volta reading series at the Replay Lounge.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 23, 2021
The title Green and cover photo of a sweet little girl might lead you to expect a book of gentle childhood reminisce, but look at the name of the publisher: Riot in Your Throat. Merge those opposite expectations at the intersections of Truth and Melissa Fite Johnson.
Childhood, our time of becoming, has always been a favorite treasure trove for poets, but we have the safety of telling only what we want to tell, setting aside whatever is too painful to expose. Some of these poems let us know that Johnson has been beating herself up with guilt over things that were not her fault. Others admit to how much pain is hidden beneath the surface. The poet has cut the ropes of her safety net and dropped the truth on us, making the reading sometimes painful, but also cathartic. If Johnson can prevail, so can we.
Poems about the simpler joys of everyday life and a happy marriage balance the tone. She also pulls us through time, leaping into the future or past to share advice and perspective with herself and those dear to her. The dedication to her husband says, “For Marc – I tried to tell my sixteen-year-old-self about you.”
I appreciated the quieter moments and bits of whimsy in poems like “Ode to Weeding,” “The Littlest Chicken,” and this excerpt from “Fifteen,”
“The most romantic moment of my life:
Austin snapped the eraser from his pencil
when I asked to borrow one for a test.”
But it’s the most vulnerable moments that will haunt me, even when she tones back physical assault by titling it like a fable, “The Woman and the Wolf.”
“He strangled little sounds from me
in his doorway. Later
he called the word strangle
dramatic. You could breathe fine.”
I’d already read or heard many of the poems about her father’s difficult life after a stroke when she was very young and his early death when she was a teen. Those continue to be my favorites. The book begins with “I’m Only Happy When It Rains,” a song she turns up full volume to sing to while driving her father around. He’s half paralyzed and can’t talk or drive.’’
“. …I’d cried
through the last chorus: I’m riding high upon
a deep depression. I’m only happy when it rains….
…He pointed to his chest,
mouthed, Me, too. He struggled to sit up. Me, too.”
Childhood, our time of becoming, has always been a favorite treasure trove for poets, but we have the safety of telling only what we want to tell, setting aside whatever is too painful to expose. Some of these poems let us know that Johnson has been beating herself up with guilt over things that were not her fault. Others admit to how much pain is hidden beneath the surface. The poet has cut the ropes of her safety net and dropped the truth on us, making the reading sometimes painful, but also cathartic. If Johnson can prevail, so can we.
Poems about the simpler joys of everyday life and a happy marriage balance the tone. She also pulls us through time, leaping into the future or past to share advice and perspective with herself and those dear to her. The dedication to her husband says, “For Marc – I tried to tell my sixteen-year-old-self about you.”
I appreciated the quieter moments and bits of whimsy in poems like “Ode to Weeding,” “The Littlest Chicken,” and this excerpt from “Fifteen,”
“The most romantic moment of my life:
Austin snapped the eraser from his pencil
when I asked to borrow one for a test.”
But it’s the most vulnerable moments that will haunt me, even when she tones back physical assault by titling it like a fable, “The Woman and the Wolf.”
“He strangled little sounds from me
in his doorway. Later
he called the word strangle
dramatic. You could breathe fine.”
I’d already read or heard many of the poems about her father’s difficult life after a stroke when she was very young and his early death when she was a teen. Those continue to be my favorites. The book begins with “I’m Only Happy When It Rains,” a song she turns up full volume to sing to while driving her father around. He’s half paralyzed and can’t talk or drive.’’
“. …I’d cried
through the last chorus: I’m riding high upon
a deep depression. I’m only happy when it rains….
…He pointed to his chest,
mouthed, Me, too. He struggled to sit up. Me, too.”
June 16, 2021
Beautiful collection of poetry.
March 11, 2023
Both elegy and ode, this collection speaks to loss in all its forms and how to move through to the other side as stronger. These are poems that make you FEEL.
May 16, 2021
I savored this collection a couple poems at a time. They were raw and reflective at the same time. A few of these left me still and I snapped photos to share them with friends. I found myself nodding and humming in agreement and amen more than once. Melissa has written an incredible collection of poetry. I highly recommend taking this book outside around sunset.
October 4, 2022
I read While the Kettle's On a few years ago and really enjoyed it -- Melissa Fite Johnson has delivered again and clearly leveled up her craft with this collection. Her ordinary and pivotal moments are sharpened into narratives both piercing and tender. As any good poem can, these poems drew me deeply in and held me there.
June 28, 2021
I liked the book. The poetry was beautiful and articulate. Full of emotion and heartfelt. Very good read. Many of the topics were quite relatable.
October 4, 2022
I read While the Kettle's On a few years ago and really enjoyed it -- Melissa Fite Johnson has delivered again and clearly leveled up her craft with this collection. Her ordinary and pivotal moments are sharpened into narratives both piercing and tender. As any good poem can, these poems drew me deeply in and held me there.
May 28, 2021
Heartbreaking, inventive, and candid. Her trademark wit and pop culture nostalgia is on full display here. I very much enjoyed her collection.
December 31, 2020
I was fortunate to get an advanced copy of this manuscript, and it is a remarkable collection. I recognized several poems from Melissa Fite Johnson's terrific chapbook "A Crooked Door Cut into the Sky," but even the familiar poems feel fresh and like they have new things to say (or new ways of saying them) when re-contextualized by other poems. Johnson's vocabulary feels plainspoken, everyday, like she's not concerned with impressing the reader. But then she'll wallop you with an image so striking and so original you appreciate that the unadorned nature of her writing is part of her craft, and that it takes a lot of work to seem so effortless. Her subject matter is deeply personal and often uncomfortable or painful, but then she surprises you with poems about Taylor Swift or a Kardashian and reminds you that she's a whole, rounded person. Her work, even when the exploring difficult parts of living, always feels like it's inviting you in, sharing very specific aspects of herself with you that you might recognize in yourself and then feel less alone in the world. She's without a doubt one of my favorite contemporary poets, and I hope we get many more books from her.
December 3, 2020
Johnson takes us on a journey through loss and change, through sexual violence and uncertainty, to a place where love and hope and happiness bloom. Every poem made me want to keep reading, every poem pulled me in deeper. I read this book in one sitting and then read it again the next day. These poems call to you!
from Visiting My Sixteen-Year-Old Self: "You wasted the last weeks / of your father's life still / and uncomfortable beneath a boy, / his hand down your pants, / his small pink tongue erasing / and erasing your breasts."
from It's Not My Mother's Fault: "she cast insecurities / onto me, her only copy - // brightly, You and I both / need to lose 20 pounds. // Too tall, both of us; / women should be folded // wings."
from Duplex For My Future Self: "My husband, making coffee in the kitchen / or dead. Tell me, future self, so I can be ready."
Overall, these poems are amazing and this book is wonderful. Highly recommended, you'll want to read this book.
from Visiting My Sixteen-Year-Old Self: "You wasted the last weeks / of your father's life still / and uncomfortable beneath a boy, / his hand down your pants, / his small pink tongue erasing / and erasing your breasts."
from It's Not My Mother's Fault: "she cast insecurities / onto me, her only copy - // brightly, You and I both / need to lose 20 pounds. // Too tall, both of us; / women should be folded // wings."
from Duplex For My Future Self: "My husband, making coffee in the kitchen / or dead. Tell me, future self, so I can be ready."
Overall, these poems are amazing and this book is wonderful. Highly recommended, you'll want to read this book.
June 9, 2022
Near the middle of the book, a page that knocked me flat:
Learning my friend had sex
was like pinning on the donkey's tail:
the blindfold came off, and
suddenly tails could grow from snouts
or be stomped by hooves, and
she could stretch naked alongside a man.
Learning my friend had sex
was like pinning on the donkey's tail:
the blindfold came off, and
suddenly tails could grow from snouts
or be stomped by hooves, and
she could stretch naked alongside a man.
November 19, 2024
If anyone has ever told you that sadness can be beautiful, they refer to works like those of Melissa Fite Johnson’s work in her collection GREEN. Johnson is one of those poets, able to turn the fracture of a glass to light, and find something lovely. In this, a series of poems primarily about the loss of her father, and the parts of us that knit slowly back together after grief, but remain unwhole. It is a breakingly honest account, interspersed with the fine mind writing of an acute observer of life. Sorrow has a heavy place at the table, but you find yourself wanting to inhabit that space. This is achieved by writing so well, even subjects that can cause us to flinch, or avoid, will act like a fire on a cold day. GREEN is anything but the early compositions of grief and loss.
He died in 1998. No cell phone.
How this century would’ve helped him.
If he could have waited. If a poem were a bridge. (IF A POEM).
I was told once in a critique class, that women could help themselves if they would stop writing poetry about their lives, and consider ‘higher subjects.’ When questioned further, the orator suggested the meaning of life, philosophy and religion as worthy subjects. I am glad that lecture was half-full. It is exactly that kind of reduction that has stifled women throughout history. It is exactly the grit of a woman’s life, that has all the ‘higher subject’ we could hope for in the depths this writer will plum to speak resounding truisms:
You wasted the last weeks
of your father’s life still
and uncomfortable beneath a boy,
his hand down your pants,
his small pink tongue erasing
and erasing your breasts. (VISITING MY SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD SELF).
GREEN is a mature write, through youth’s eyes. The gentle prodding of loss, of mother’s who remarry, and move away, of what to do with the memories you possess and who possess you. The final poem in the collection is so searingly evocative, you must weep with its beauty and wish someone will one day immortalize you in such a way that you will be remembered with love always.
caught in an envelope.
My mother’s writing. A letter
my father sent me, our house to our house.
Flute head separated from its body of keys. (SUBMERGED).
If you love your father, this will hit hard and hit often. The tragedy of Johnson’s father’s early illness, is unbearably cruel. How she renders his challenges and her enduring love of him, is poignant and incredibly moving. GREEN is very lyric in its position on love. It sings boldly of a firm belief, even in the face of tragedy, love stays. Whilst this was a crushing read, it left me hopeful and indelibly marked by its sheer beauty. What a brave, real book, what a deep flavorful journey.
He died in 1998. No cell phone.
How this century would’ve helped him.
If he could have waited. If a poem were a bridge. (IF A POEM).
I was told once in a critique class, that women could help themselves if they would stop writing poetry about their lives, and consider ‘higher subjects.’ When questioned further, the orator suggested the meaning of life, philosophy and religion as worthy subjects. I am glad that lecture was half-full. It is exactly that kind of reduction that has stifled women throughout history. It is exactly the grit of a woman’s life, that has all the ‘higher subject’ we could hope for in the depths this writer will plum to speak resounding truisms:
You wasted the last weeks
of your father’s life still
and uncomfortable beneath a boy,
his hand down your pants,
his small pink tongue erasing
and erasing your breasts. (VISITING MY SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD SELF).
GREEN is a mature write, through youth’s eyes. The gentle prodding of loss, of mother’s who remarry, and move away, of what to do with the memories you possess and who possess you. The final poem in the collection is so searingly evocative, you must weep with its beauty and wish someone will one day immortalize you in such a way that you will be remembered with love always.
caught in an envelope.
My mother’s writing. A letter
my father sent me, our house to our house.
Flute head separated from its body of keys. (SUBMERGED).
If you love your father, this will hit hard and hit often. The tragedy of Johnson’s father’s early illness, is unbearably cruel. How she renders his challenges and her enduring love of him, is poignant and incredibly moving. GREEN is very lyric in its position on love. It sings boldly of a firm belief, even in the face of tragedy, love stays. Whilst this was a crushing read, it left me hopeful and indelibly marked by its sheer beauty. What a brave, real book, what a deep flavorful journey.
September 11, 2021
This poem.
I'm Only Happy When it Rains
My song came on and I jerked the volume up,
stomped on the gas, sand along: My only comfort
is the night gone black. Since his laryngectomy,
my father couldn't talk. He studied me
from the passenger seat. I had to chauffeur him around
after his strokes. I wished the Toyota were a rocket
shooting me out of this town. Pour your misery
down on me. The song ended. I cried
through the last chorus: I'm riding high upon
a deep depression. I'm only happy when it rains.
He gestured to his paralyzed side--his right hand
a claw resting in his lap, his right leg limp
against the car door. He pointed to his chest,
mouthed, Me too. He struggled to sit up. Me too.
I'm Only Happy When it Rains
My song came on and I jerked the volume up,
stomped on the gas, sand along: My only comfort
is the night gone black. Since his laryngectomy,
my father couldn't talk. He studied me
from the passenger seat. I had to chauffeur him around
after his strokes. I wished the Toyota were a rocket
shooting me out of this town. Pour your misery
down on me. The song ended. I cried
through the last chorus: I'm riding high upon
a deep depression. I'm only happy when it rains.
He gestured to his paralyzed side--his right hand
a claw resting in his lap, his right leg limp
against the car door. He pointed to his chest,
mouthed, Me too. He struggled to sit up. Me too.
July 1, 2021
Such tender care with the language in these poems.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews