Music For Mussolini

Poetry. California Interest. African & African American Studies. nick johnson's debut collection is dream like, playful in its use of language, and yet deeply rooted and serious. These soulful poems sing with operatic breath of loss and the tender moments when we find irrefutable hope. "From the first pages of this beautiful debut collection, readers will find poems scored like music and voices unafraid to leap, turn, and glide across the page. nick johnson's work dances with memory, rides the edges of grief, and sings with wit and longing. Whether remembering a mother or reckoning with histories of war and oppression, the poems here dare to turn gaze and body toward life's brightest and darkest mysteries. Here is a poet unafraid of silence, space, and breath. 'Be breath or be brief, ' urges the speaker in 'jazzphorism / what the saxophone says.' And, later: 'Slip a song inside a song.' The poems in MUSIC FOR MUSSOLINI remind the reader to let play and the rhythms of well-scored po