Traveler

This fourth collection from Johnston (Sources) bring his careful, graceful, almost neoclassical pen to scenes from all over the world%E2%80%94Japan, Shanghai, "the Mongol steppes," the Midwest "when a thunderstorm/ trundles down the Wabash," and the Scottish holy isle of Iona. Co-editor of the up-and-coming small press Flood Editions, Johnson also earned some repute as a nature writer, and his short, deliberate stanzas show an unusually observant eye, for nonhuman nature as well as for culture. "A rough-barked/ bur oak/ mostly trunk/ outlives/ its understory"; in a prison yard, "the morning sun... glances off the hubcap/ of a distant Cadillac/ joining the flow of traffic." Sometimes sublime, more often astringent, Johnston's poems of places and things seen%E2%80%94they make up most of the volume%E2%80%94should please fans of that older world traveler, August Kleinzahler. Yet Johnston may be most original when his subjects turn up close to home: his cool temperament meets its fruitful complement when he writes of family and children, most of all his young daughter, who in the brief, fine triptych entitled "Appetites" "lies awake/ talking in confidential tones/ with one she calls/ my friend who eats me." It would take a hard heart to resist such humor, such warmth, set amid such control as Johnston shows. (Sept.)