Garden-of-Stars

“Traveler” is a perfect example of a poetry collection that strives to be more scientific and geographical in tone, incorporating terminology and ideas that are more “factual” to get at the abstract and subconscious. Yet it doesn’t do tis very successfully – I’d instead recommend Anand’s “A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes”, which demonstrates not only the advantage of a scientific background, but also the ability to get at the subconscious better. Johnston’s poems were much more descriptive and scenic, in some cases unable to go beyond the initial beauty of the format and the words themselves. Others, like “Appetites” or “Crumbs”, both of which were made up of three short sections, clearly tried to reach out and touch upon something bigger, but were only partially successful. There was something soothing about these poems, but not necessarily moving. Perhaps it is the stark contrast between what I’ve read before and this collection, or maybe I wasn’t in the right mindset to read and appreciate them fully. True to the title, the poems in “Traveler” take you on a journey, but it’ll take some time after coming home in order to fully adjust and process what exactly just happened.