Tangled in Vow & Beseech

Tangled in Vow & Beseech vows to remember what we lose and beseeches us to embrace every moment. Throughout, McCabe Johnson writes intimately about family, nature, and animals, while also protesting the violences of religion, patriarchy, and racism. The lyricism of these poems carries the speaker into the "clear slipstream of memory" to "river me home. River me home."

-Craig Santos Perez, author of from incorporated territory [?mot], winner of the National Book Award for Poetry



Through an array of poetic forms, Jill McCabe Johnson explores a deep sense of interconnectedness. These lyric tangles help us grapple with a life where the ugliest abuses of person and planet occur alongside a mother's love for her son, the grace of childhood innocence, the anniversary of a first kiss, and the understanding that "in this land" of "dogwood blossom, swordfern and fen" is "everything" we need to "believe."

-Derek Sheffield, author of Not for Luck, co-editor of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, and Poetry Editor of Terrain.org