Sarah Johnson

Typically, poetry that is direct and simplistic has many potential traps--it can be simply beige and mundane, or it can be over-stuffed with nonsense. One central focused simple poem that works very well, is Sarah Johnson's "Mr. Boswell Peels an Orange" here in Four Way Review in issue one. It has a great sudden turn in the second stanza that really elevates the poem, and then the ending is just great.

This poem has a type of Borges-like focus, a way of looking at oranges over and over again. Each time its fresh and interesting. Few people achieve this type of honest, many faceted list. Usually entries ring false, but this poem did it.

The simple imagery is really excellent, let me put up an excerpt here of the opening, the turn and the ending:


My wife’s marmalade is the best I’ve had. She peels and crushes
the oranges herself, and for days
the house smells of oranges’ beaten golden pulp. Under her persistent hands,
the fruit submits. It becomes a vivid concentrate, [...]
     Johnson used to make a drink for himself
at our Club, with water and muddled oranges. With a spoon he crushed the segments
down in the glass. Fishing out the peels, he put them quickly
in his pocket [...]
I saw the peels
in a neat stack atop his diary. Under pressure, my friend admitted
his great liking for orangepeel. I noted down his strange unwillingness
                 to answer freely. Each peel was scraped and dried,
and cut into thin pieces. What he did with them next, he could not be prevailed upon
to tell. Firmly as always, he pressed my expression into vigor
and correctitude: he could not be prevailed upon,even by his dearest friends, to tell. My pages smell of citrus, still.