Join us on Thursday, September 7 at 7pm PT when Jessica E. Johnson joins us to celebrate her collection, Metabolics, with Jenny Qi and Preeti Vangani at 9th Ave!
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online/Livestream link available soon
Praise for Metabolics
“Capturing the ephemeral ways in which one is strange to oneself—the edges of self, of forests, of spaces, of existence entangled with the limitation of the shapes of things, this book, full of multi-species encounters, enacts the discontinuous and porous nature of selfhood and of being more than what can be contained within the confines of a body. With a keen perception and a lyricism that penetrates like light, Metabolics is a collection that will possess you.”-Janice Lee, author of 'Separation Anxiety' and 'Imagine a Death'
“Johnson metabolizes the strange rituals of daily life into poetic language. With a ‘vast, provisional body,’ she moves between the home and the world, touching and consuming the real (plastic, cats, trees, devices) and the virtual (the internet, social networks, texts) in entangled ‘cycles within cycles.’ Once you enter this book, it too will consume your attention. It will eat your imagination until you become ‘something more than you imagined.”-Craig Santos Perez, author of 'Habitat Threshold'
About Metabolics
In this debut poetry collection, a single speaker tries to control her body and negotiate her time with digital devices, all the while navigating identities, impulses, and relationships that are often in tension.
Metabolics, a book-length poem, borrows the movements of metabolic pathways to consider how nature accomplishes both balance and deep transformation. In visual figures and prose blocks that bridge the divide between poetry and nonfiction, Jessica E. Johnson employs scientific idioms to construct an allegory about a family in the Pacific Northwest. The region becomes a character in its own right, with cedars, moss, and heavy cloud knitting the mother, father, boy, and girl into their setting.
This far-reaching volume also serves as a study of the ecologies of contemporary parenting, with adults and children affected by “feeds” both on screen and off as their bodies metabolize food, the environment, and excess feelings such as rage. From climate change to kombucha to smartphones and curated produce, the smallest details of daily life in “Plasticland” catalyze a larger examination of selfhood: “Despite so many attempts to resolve this tension, sometimes you are you and also sometimes mother just as light can be both particle and wave.”
About Jessica E. Johnson
Jessica E. Johnson writes poetry, nonfiction, and things in between. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in the Paris Review, Harvard Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, River Teeth, and Tin House, among others. Her chapbook In Absolutes We Seek Each Other was an Oregon Book Award finalist. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
About Jenny Qi
Jenny Qi is the author of Focal Point, winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize. Her essays and poems have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, ZYZZYVA and elsewhere. She has received support from organizations such as Tin House, Omnidawn, Kearny Street Workshop, the San Francisco Writers Grotto, the San Francisco Foundation, Nomadic Press, the Brown Handler Residency, SWWIM, The Betsy Writers Room, and the Mountain Words Residency. Born in Pennsylvania to Chinese immigrants, she grew up mostly in Las Vegas and Nashville and now lives in San Francisco, where she completed her Ph.D. in Cancer Biology. She has been translating her late mother’s memoirs of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and immigration to the U.S. and is working on more essays and poems in conversation with this work.
About Preeti Vangani
Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet, writer and educator. Born and raised in Mumbai, she is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions). Her poetry has been published in Gulf Coast, Hobart, Threepenny Review, among other journals. Her essays have been published in Buzzfeed India, The Ladies Finger, Huffington Post among other places. Her debut short story, Work Wives, was awarded the 2022 PEN America/Robert J. Dau Prize. She is the Poetry Editor for Glass and has worked as a Poet Mentor with Youth Speaks. She has read her work at several Bay Area events including Litquake, Writers with Drinks, The Racket, and Babylon Salon. Her work has been supported by residencies and fellowships from Ucross, Djerassi, Tin House, PEN America and CCI. She holds an MFA (Writing) from University of San Francisco and currently teaches in the program.
In this debut poetry collection, a single speaker tries to control her body and negotiate her time with digital devices, all the while navigating identities, impulses, and relationships that are often in tension.
Metabolics, a book-length poem, borrows the movements of metabolic pathways to consider how nature accomplishes both balance and deep transformation.
Winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award, Focal Point is a scientist's unofficial dissertation, a daughter's faithful correspondence, and a coming-of-age story. Written largely while Jenny Qi was a young Ph.D.
(This book cannot be returned nor exchanged.)
Humor-dark, sharp, and often redemptive-permeates this irresistible collection of poems exploring womanhood, family and sexual relationships with the candor of a camera's eye 'blinking to capture one perfect shot.' Preeti Vangani cuts to the heart of each moment like a reporter on the beat; hers is a poetry of the unresolved present and the mercurial future tense.