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A review by keight
In Full Velvet by Jenny Johnson
4.0
The title of this book refers to furry skin on the antlers of young deer, which most shed as the antlers finish calcifying. The titular poem mentions some whitetails that don’t shed their velvet, seen by hunters as “raggedy-horn freaks” who live “long solitary lives, unweathered / by the rutting season.”
There are moments in this collection that felt too florid for my taste; I appreciated the more everyday, banal poems — about going to the barbershop and not getting gay married. But I enjoy the animalistic nature of Johnson’s work, where a “child is a little lion cub” and a “mouth is stretched panther-wide,” later someone else has a “dogged smile.” Read an excerpt on my booklog
There are moments in this collection that felt too florid for my taste; I appreciated the more everyday, banal poems — about going to the barbershop and not getting gay married. But I enjoy the animalistic nature of Johnson’s work, where a “child is a little lion cub” and a “mouth is stretched panther-wide,” later someone else has a “dogged smile.” Read an excerpt on my booklog