Books by R.K. Johnston
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The Wandering Circle – 2011 The Wandering Circle is a metaphor for life's journey. From economics In a Wink to the condition of Children of India, finding roots in a Jamaican Synagogue to drifting along the McKenzie River, this collection of poems personifies a soul whose home is timeless, yet Hangs from a Spider Thread. Metaphorically, let's just say I've had my fill of Tennessee Williams... maybe it's now time for a change in rhythm and syntax. Perhaps some Roy K Johnston is in order? Ha Speaking of which, congratulations on your most recent work, "The Wandering Circle." I've read several of your poems over the past few days. Love "City Space." I found a particular affinity toward "Time of Anxiety" and "Renew America," among so many other wonderful works. Roy, I've discovered we may have something in common. You are an 'evangelist' in disguise... so am I. - Steven Davis |
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Dissonance and Consonance – 2009 The traditional rules of consonance and dissonance are to be freed from such musical forms. Poems that seek their own destinies evoke sound abstract compositions. I seek images that lie somewhere between representation and abstraction. Artistic intersections are also the search for correspondences between sound, color and texture in poetry. I am seeking to have a voice in poetry that contributes to future new forms. This kind of composition looks at the possibilities of the 21st and 22nd centuries. We must never stop in the quest for change. Yet, let things be their own. The stand for freedom is to live and try to understand all of the responsibilities that come from this position that is given to all of us. |
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Kenosis San Luis Obispo - 2007 Kenosis in literary aesthetics is the affect (feeling) experienced by the reader of lyric or poetry forms. It is the experience of the emptying of the ego-personality of the reader into the immediate sensory manipulation of poetics. In this sense, kenotics inflicts an experience of timelessness upon the reader. |
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Seeds of Tolerance - 2006 Seeds of Tolerance delivers steady, soft, spoken meditations on the human condition in a time of war. Readers used to these themes delivered in a declamatory style of a poetry slam will just have to listen up: the message is powerful in a whisper as well as a scream. |
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The System Is Broken - 2004 This collection of poems focuses on the balance of life from war and social injustice to nature and understanding. From image to image, word and photography, this work celebrates R.K. Johnston's astute poetry and the award winning Catherine Bauknight's abstract photographic imaes to create a collaboration that is a must to experience. |