Where We're Going, Where We've Been

Arnold Johnston's poetry is "as smart, crafty, wise, and entertaining as anything being written," according to Richard Katrovas. WHERE WE'RE GOING, WHERE WE'VE BEEN is filled with poems that strike a graceful balance between structural formality and an always accessible informal voice. Johnston's work offers a wry, often humorous consideration of love and mortality that Gail Wronsky calls "both tender and unsentimental." As a writer of plays and fiction, a translator from several languages, and an actor-singer, he understands-in the words of Stuart Dybek-"that there's a song at the heart of every poem." This is a book to be savored like a well-aged malt scotch.