Poetry
Uncommon Prayer
Persea Books, 2014
“A most welcome addition to this ongoing, probably neverending pursuit of what Eliot himself called ‘next year’s words.’ ”
— Mark Jarman
“It is compelling the whole way through and for a long time after.”
— David Thacker
Read a review of Uncommon Prayer in Spoon River Poetry Review.
Read a review of Uncommon Prayer in Pleiades.
Read a review of Uncommon Prayer in 15 Bytes.
Read a review of Uncommon Prayer in Poetry Northwest.
A Metaphorical God
Persea Books, 2008
“She’s a polyphonic prestidigitator, a virtuoso of the vibrant heart, and — stunning in our fallen world — a genuine metaphysician, with all the healing aptitude the word implies.”
— Linda Gregerson
“Dazzling….She writes with Milton open at her elbow but with the real dirt of a real Utah under her fingertips.”
— The Yale Review
Read a review of A Metaphorical God in the Virginia Quarterly Review.
Read a review of A Metaphorical God in Michigan Quarterly Review.
Leviathan with a Hook
Persea Books, 2002
“It is a beautiful book, and an unusual one … Its remarkable lucidity, its seductive energy, its lushness, and its music form a vision in which the real and the transcendental are indistinguishable.”
— Mark Strand
“No other poet writing today gives as she does, like a spirit of harvest, so much of the fragrant, astonishing, living and dying world, and makes it so sweetly and sternly known.”
— Allen Grossman
“Wild, inventive, hungry, celebratory … These poems fear neither glory nor ruin.”
— Rosanna Warren
Read a review of Leviathan with a Hook in the Virginia Quarterly Review.
Read a review of Leviathan with a Hook in The Yale Review.
Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days: A Bilingual Edition
"In translating Hesiod, a scholar has to evoke both the rustic, conversational tone of Works and Days, as well as the magisterial epic voice of the Theogony, with all of its glittering details. Johnson, already a poet who could write about paint drying on a wall and make tears come to your eyes, makes Hesiod's two very different works come alive in very different ways. This is a beautiful book, and a terrific introduction to Archaic Greek literature." — Douglas Metzger, Literature and History Podcast
Uncommon Prayer
"With the fine artistry, precision, erudition, wit, and lexical magic we have come to expect from Johnson." — Michael Sowder, 15 Bytes
Made Flesh: Sacrament and Poetics in Post-Reformation England
"Kimberly Johnson's dual identity as scholar and poet animates this strikingly original book—not only in its limpid, lively prose, but also in its resonant reappraisal of a seemingly familiar subject. Early modern devotional poetry has often been analyzed in terms of its theological and ecclesiological contexts; the real strength and purchase of Johnson's book lies in its integration of this contextual material with a searching investigation of the formal strategies of poetry as such."— Molly Murray, Columbia University
Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry
"The painstaking work of two poet-scholars, Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson, the collection promises to be a crucial source text for scholars, a course text for students and a manual for seekers who wish to find prayers that fit their condition and cast of mind." — Cleveland Plain Dealer
Virgil's Georgics: A Poem of the Land
"Kimberly Johnson's superbly colourful, rhythmic and readable new translation...finds a way of feeding the Virgilian strain of English verse – from Milton to Wordsworth and beyond – back into her lines." — The Independent (UK)