Hags on Tractors

<p>In these memoir-textured poems Penny Johnson puts us in the driver's seat-of a tractor that is-and shows us what it means to be a mature rural woman grappling with the land and its seasonal weather changes as well as the unique challenge of leading this life amidst a male-dominated field.</p><p></p><p>---------------</p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>In </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Hags on Tractors </em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Penny Johnson's poems enter the land</span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> </em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>and finger the coloring change of beige mushroom vermillion tomatoes evergreen rosemary fat-thumbed blackberries magenta holly hocks in her deeply porous study under the unforgiving sky. She ingests this place </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>[a]s if land can hold still</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> all it burns buries and brings alive.</span></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>-Beatrix Gates author of <em>The Burning Key: New & Selected Poems (1973-2023)</em></strong></p><p></p><p>Johnson thumbs her nose at tradition engaging us through a structure which floats and spins and turns in on itself....her poems bring the rural scene to life with all its sights smells sounds tastes and challenges</p><p><strong>-Susan Blair editor of <em>The Shrub-Steppe Poetry Journal </em>author of <em>A Howling</em> and <em>What Remains of a Life</em> </strong></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The power of these poems is due to the simple fact that Johnson has invented a language using English words that resembles to great effect the nature of trauma disassociation sexuality cars boys horses.</span></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>-Michael Kline author of <em>When I Was a Twin</em></strong></p>