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Eduardo & I: Prose poems by Peter Johnson

White Pine Press, 2006 $14

Award-winner, paradigm-shifting editor, prose poetry master and stand-up comedian of letters—not bad for a local boy. Like prose poet Jack Kerouac, Buffalo’s own Peter Johnson likes to travel with friends who he can view the world through. In his last collection, Miracles & Mortifications (White Pine Press, 2001), which won the prestigious James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, Johnson’s travel partner was Gigi. This time around Johnson creates Eduardo—a character bizarre and humanly flawed enough to allow his imagination free reign. And Peter Johnson’s imagination is a brilliant, constantly surprising place, perfectly matched to the flexible, surrealistic, and, yes, poetic, possibilities afforded by the prose poetry form. Former editor of the seminal The Prose Poem: An International Journal, and author of three previous prose poem collections—including his first White Pine Press title, Pretty Happy!—Peter Johnson has not only carved his own niche in the constantly unfolding universe of American prose poetics, but he’s helped establish the form’s foothold in this country. Plus, he’s damn funny. Throughout this book, Eduardo tries to start a “real ass-kicking, girl-licking” rock band; pretends to be tough-guy poet Charles Bukowski, but with a bagel and tomato juice instead of whiskey and whores; and hangs “outside from the top of the Biltmore at 4 a.m. with no possibility of applause.” At the end of the day, Eduardo & I is as humorous a book of poetry as you’re likely to read. The book’s second section is still funny, but also turns more personal as Johnson leaves Eduardo behind, turning his gaze upon his own life and family. Here we see the poet meandering through a suburban landscape of grave yards, living rooms and turnpikes with a head full of partially-formed poems—half smiling, half crying. As always, Peter Johnson’s landscapes may be unsettling, but they are always authentic.