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Terry S Johnson

 

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First name
Terry S
Last name
Johnson
 

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About Me
Terry S. Johnson performed as a professional harpsichordist before serving as public school teacher for twenty-five years in Amherst, Massachusetts. She earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2005. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Cirque, Driftwood, Edge, Journal of the American Medical Association, Main Street Rag, Naugatuck River Review, New Verse News, Passager, Slipstream, Technoculture and Theodate.

Terry has published two poetry collections entitled Coalescence (2014 Honorable Mention in the New England Book Festival) and Plunge (2019) as well as a chapbook from Shanti Arts entitled the stars, your eyes (2026).

After a lifetime in New England, Terry recently relocated to Anchorage, Alaska, to help raise her grandson.
Title 1
Coalescence
Cover Image
Summary
In this stunning poetry collection, Terry S. Johnson explores our everyday personal lives in the larger context of those who have come before us. “Quills caressed words like beads on an abacus. Each season, each storied memory, an accounting.” Whether writing in free verse or traditional forms employing narrative or lyric poetry, Johnson plays with sound and meaning. Beethoven juxtaposed with jazz, Pollack with Vermeer, Mississippi with Auschwitz, or ancient Egypt with present day Iraq, Johnson deepens our understanding of the historical and natural worlds. “How fortunate we do not sense the Earth’s spin— its path predictable, its speed fierce.”
Where to Buy
Amazon
Title 2
Plunge
Cover Image 2
Summary 2
A P-47 American pilot shot down in northern Italy parachutes into a mountainside. Daring partisans hide him from the Nazis for tedeschi are everywhere. A generation later, the airman's grown daughter journeys to meet his saviors and her namesakes, gradually becoming a member of village life.
In her second collection, Plunge, Terry S. Johnson gracefully weaves memory, research and first-hand experience into a poignant portrayal of her father, as well as his rescuers and her deepening ties to their descendants.
Honoring the music and mysteries of language—a letter home in soldier-slang harmonizes with Latin prayer, local Italian dialect clashes with formal German, lovers falter in their common high school French—Plunge portrays wartime horror and hard-earned prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic.
Where to Buy 2
Amazon

Off the Common Books through Levellers Press
Title 3
the stars, your eyes
Cover Image 3
Summary 3
“With lyricism, Terry charts the painful journey through her beloved’s illness, death, and beyond. These poems do not shy away from the harsh realities of navigating a dizzying array of treatments, procedures, and routines that ‘no one has prepared us for.’ Underneath the pain is the acknowledgment that ‘we must create a new lexicon, shape our denouement.’ As readers, we experience Johnson’s loss and acceptance as she chooses a new landscape where ‘increasing spring light sprouts green.’ Blurb by Gail Thomas
Where to Buy 3
Shanti Arts Publishing

Bookshop

Amazon

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