King of Terrors

(Paperback)

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Description

Graceful, sculpted poems that investigate mortality and look for answers in love, friendship, and art.

Written after Jim Johnstone was diagnosed with a brain tumor early in the pandemic, The King of Terrors is an address to the authors Future Ghost. Haunted by the evolving North American landscape and the anxiety of living in a dysfunctional society, these poems ask: Are we doomed to repeat the decisions that have brought us to the point of collapse Is there a way to affect nature in a positive way and save ourselves in the process Can love be a starting point in a quest for change The haunting that takes place in The King of Terrors is corporeal a bodily fear that manifests in poems about the pandemic, living with illness, and a series of love poems for his wife.

"There is a moving, fierce intensity to The King of Terrorsauthor ofA Better Life

Reviews

Infinity Networkis a spare, sculpted, and devastating collection that fearlessly explores the outermost range, reverb, and implications of identity politics and techtopia as pale substitutes for human vitality and interdependency. Virginia Konchan,On the Seawall on Infinity Network

Dog Earposes personal impressions and collective questions - what we leave behind, if anything, in the physical world - by cultivating images and semi-narratives that are deeply, and sometimes, ridiculously human. In doing so, Johnstone's poems confidently confront love, death, and spectacle. Brick: A Literary JournalonDog Ear

Johnstones poems realize that 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky' was permeated with 'Nothing to do, nowhere to go, / I wanna be sedated' from its very origin and, by now, has given way to it entirely. A. F. Moritz,Hamilton Arts & LettersonThe Chemical Life

Author Bio

Jim Johnstone is a Toronto-based poet, editor, and critic. He is the author of seven collections of poetry including The Chemical Life, which was shortlisted for the 2018 ReLit Award. Johnstone has also won several awards including the Bliss Carman Poetry Award, a CBC Literary Award, the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, the Robin Blaser Award, and Poetrys Editors Prize for Book Reviewing. Currently, he curates the Anstruther Books imprint at Palimpsest Press, where he published The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry.