…his poems show us what poems can do for us,
how they keep what we love close,
how they salvage and sanctify our lives.
—DARA WIER, author of In the Still of the Night
how they keep what we love close,
how they salvage and sanctify our lives.
—DARA WIER, author of In the Still of the Night
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early praise for Monkey Island
“How the hell did we become the way we are? Ask John Morrison! He won’t tell you, because he doesn’t know, but he will provide you exquisite examples with lyrical grace in poems that work like illustrations that accompany certain words in the dictionary. The ghost of God is here, and memory…that strange harbinger reminding us of what we will become. His poems are a little break from the wind, a pause from the chaos, a two-person picnic as we slowly make our way to the grave.”
—CARL ADAMSHICK, author of Birches
“John Morrison’s new collection of poems, Monkey Island, retains the wry thoughtfulness of his earlier collection Heaven of the Moment, and goes further into memory’s resonant attention. The sustained sequences such at the title poem and the concluding “Where I Walk” mesmerize with their attention to both ear and soul. These poems commune richly, if sideways, with lost moments, bringing them forward into the always-contemporary heart.”
—ED SKOOG, author of Travelers Leaving for the City
“I’ll…step into//the why and whip of wind,/be lifted/ left blasted… so goes Monkey Island’s invitation to join poet John Morrison as he faces our long loneliness with poetry’s alchemical actions. Morrison initiates transformations in birth, death, God, truth, us, and animals, life and land, water, grit and stink, love and grief, family and blue giraffes— his poems show us what poems can do for us, how they keep what we love close, how they salvage and sanctify our lives.”
—DARA WIER, author of In the Still of the Night
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About the Author
John C. Morrison lives in Portland, Oregon. His first book, Heaven of the Moment, won the Rhea & Seymour Gorsline poetry competition and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in Poetry. He teaches for Portland Community College and at the Attic Institute as an Associate Fellow. He is also an associate editor for the fabulist journal of literature, Phantom Drift.
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