Overview

Jerry T. Johnson's Bad Fruit boldly asks society: have we lost our minds or taken leave of our senses? We eat lies and say the lies taste good. We inhale pollutants and say the air is fresh. We watch glaciers melt and say there is no global warming. We drink bad wine and raise toasts to good health. When facing atrocities we chose to close our eyes. Jerry T. Johnson's Bad Fruit warns us of the injurious rhetoric continuously broadcasted into our social consciousness. Bad Fruit shows us the bad apples and the rotted pears offered to us daily and urges us to beware as it reminds us of the old saying, ""we are what we eat.""

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9781966075127

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Reviews

Poet Jerry Johnson's Bad Fruit is a dynamic, provocative, and well-crafted collection of contemporary poetry, completely captivating from start to finish. Johnson exhibits innovation and poetic prowess as he explores themes of beauty and joy while ""dancing"" to a steady influx of friction and toxicity driven by both capitalism and racism. Throughout, Johnson uses lyrical rhythm and precise language to punch up the tension of his braided themes. Included are two particularly significant longer pieces that vibrate with intensity. ""The Race"" is an extraordinary compressed 400-year history of the ongoing challenges in the fight for equality and inclusion, written in first-person narrative perspective. ""November 22nd, 1963"" is an excellent lengthy poem capturing a loss of innocence of a young boy and the US simultaneously, as news of JFK's assassination spreads across the nation and into the narrator's grade school and family home. A consistently remarkable collection, highly recommended. Kat Georges, author, Awe and Other Words Like Wow Jerry Johnson's book of poems Bad Fruit is a deep expositionof this world so full of injustice, oppression, and racial inequity, and while it gets harder to not fall from the tree full of one in the samehere poet Johnson passes along something ripe for understanding and fruitful to the mindas he continues to explore, inspire, and keep on dancing. Peter Carlaftes, Life in the Past Lane Jerry Johnson's latest collection takes on all the hard things: gun violence, political corruption, the lasting impact of racism, the atrocities of war, and environmental destruction where ""birds plunge from the sky while flying/ in bad air cooked by your burning smokestacks."" It's a collection that rages, even as it takes responsibility, even as it makes us culpable for the world's horrors. It's a wake-up call, a cry in the darkness. There is hope here, but when he writes that ""I compartmentalize my shaky/nerves into my own baggage,"" we know ourselves in that ""I."" These powerful poems demand we pay attention and do something. Laurel S. Peterson, Poet Laureate, Norwalk, CT 2016 - 2019, Author of Daughter of Sky and Do You Expect Your Art to Answer?

Author Information

Jerry T Johnson is a Poet and Spoken Word Artist whose poetry has appeared in a variety of literary publications worldwide. Jerry is author of 2 poetry collections: A Coldness published by Finishing Line Press and Poets Should Not Write About Politics by Evening Street Press. His poetry collection Poets Should Not Write About Politics was selected winner of the Evening Street Press' 2020 Sinclair Poetry prize and his poem ""The Apology"" (Evening Street Press) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021.

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