Yellow by Janet Joyner

Why read a book of poems if not for the sheer pleasure of reading it? Janet Joyner’s chapbook Yellow serves up delight—from the image of a woman squeezing herself out of a Nissan in “citrus colored Capris” [“Yellow Bulk”] to the “hissy whistle” of birds missing from the hollies this season [“Holly Berries]. Delight in the delicious images and lush sounds. Delight in the playful energy and humor. Delight in the wide humanity that can put us in touch with one another and with every being on earth. As the speaker looks into the “deep-time eyes” of a dying coyote, she understands that the coyote might know how to die in a way that she does not [“The Dying Coyote”]. The poems in Yellow amply illustrate Frost’s familiar maxim: “A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”

–Becky Gould Gibson, author of Need-Fire and Heading Home

To open Janet Joyner’s engaging new collection, Yellow, is to enter a biologist’s notebook. Yet, quickly one realizes it’s not just the natural world being examined here.  Over and over, we upturn rocks of words and find the unexpected: a coneflower becomes the lost girl from childhood; holly berries shift into mushroom clouds; the dry season yields fish in drag; the notches on a baboon’s fibula might not be a tool at all but a woman’s menstrual counting; a poem that begins with a destructive tsunami ends at a dishwashing sink. We find love is not always easy. We shudder at the wonder and errancy of the natural and human worlds. We are not shelled with commentary on the state of our world today, but such truths sneak in and surprise us, hitting hard when they land. Yellow is a pleasure to read for its observational perfection and delight; it is also a reminder to the reader to pay attention, to take nothing at face value, and, most importantly, to be fully alive in this world.

–Barbara Presnell,  Piece Work  and Blue Star