PROSE POETRY​

BRIAN JOHNSON
​

JANUARY IN THE UPPER MIDWEST


​​One searches in vain for a doubting tulip and some quick-witted rocks. There are no highbrow ponds. Militant grass is merely a concept. Trees do not falsify their rings; streams are not lascivious; an infamous breeze has yet to appear. Here a blind neutrality is the rule. Or is it my imagination? Nature has no imagination. It has presence, it abides. The land abides without mercy.
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​Brian Johnson is the author of Self-Portrait, a chapbook; Torch Lake and Other Poems, a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award, and Site Visits, a collaborative work with the German painter Burghard Müller-Dannhausen. He has taught creative writing at Brown, Yale, and Southern Connecticut State, where he is currently professor of English.