Rants and Raves: Selected and New Prose Poems (2024)

"The excitement of prose poetry is that it transgresses the rules to catch a glimpse of what could be called the true life of the imagination."?Charles Simic "Johnson's clear-eyed explication of our sad, bruised, fallen world becomes a celebration, an elation. Johnson shouts, 'Hallelujah!' in one of his poems. Read Rants and Raves and you'll be shouting it too."?Gary Young Rants and Raves draws from three previously published volumes and includes a selection of new poetry by this master of the prose poem. Peter Johnson has published three books of prose poems and three books of fiction. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

In 1951, Peter Johnson was born in Buffalo, New York. He received his BA from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and his MA and PhD in English from the University of New Hampshire. He is the winner of the 2001 James Laughlin Award for his second collection of prose poems, Miracles & Mortifications (2001).

His other books include Eduardo & "I" (White Pine, 2006), Pretty Happy! (1997), and the chapbook Love Poems for the Millennium (1998). He is also the author of a novel, What Happened (Front Street Books, 2007), as well as a collection of short stories, I'm a Man (2003).

Johnson is the founder and editor of The Prose Poem: An International Journal and the editor of The Best of The Prose Poem: An International Journal (White Pine Press, 2000).

About his work, the poet Bruce Smith has said, "Because Peter Johnson does not guide himself either by the turns and counterturns of verse or the horizontal urge of prose, he must continually reinvent the wheel and its destination. He writes with a lover's lavish extravagance and a yogi's self-discipline. His funny poems are heartbreaking and his serious ones are hilarious."

He received a creative writing award in 2002 from Rhode Council on the Arts and a fellowship in 1999 from the National Endowment for the Arts. A contributing editor to American Poetry Review, Web del Sol, and Slope, Peter Johnson teaches creative writing and children's literature at Providence College in Rhode Island, where he lives with his wife, Genevieve, and two sons, Kurt and Lucas.