The Incognito Lounge
The Incognito Lounge, Johnson's first full-length poetry collection, was selected by Mark Strand for the 1982 National Poetry Series. From cover to cover, Johnson takes us deep inside a psyche near the edge of ruin, and surrounds us with a landscape with the contours to match. As the cover art suggests, Johnson's is a cruel world of late rent, cheap booze, stale breath, and lacquer-thick hairspray. But these images suggest something grounded and narrative, and what Johnson delivers is something altogether more dense, lyrical, and kinetic. Like the characters in so much of Johnson's writing, the voice is this book has one eye on redemption and one eye on oblivion. - The Olives Of Oblivion
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