Rebirth of Wonder chronicles in prose David Johnson’s migrations and adventures of discovery from Minnesota to New Mexico, Mexico, Spain, and Greece. His odysseys have taken this young son of a Norwegian-Lutheran minister to the life of a poet-teacher, making his way in the world as a father, husband, grandfather, and man of tolerance and conscience of the twentieth century.
''Memoir and poetry fuse in these delightful family history and travel sagas, revealing the poet's intense experiences on a road well traveled.''--Rudolfo Anaya, author of Jemez Spring (UNM Press)
''David Johnson was my first teacher of poetry. He inspired, and gave permission to explore the territory of the soul. This collection of poems reveals the immense spirit of the poet, and these poems will in turn, inspire and give permission. . . . These poems are deft, tender, and powerful; are lights in a time of wounding. I continue to learn.''--Joy Harjo, poet, musician, professor
''What a beautiful book! David Johnson celebrates the mysterious powers that drive us to seek wholeness in family life, ancestral memory, in the putting down of roots only to uproot . . . craft and contemplation come together here and the winners are readers hungry for a fuller, more beautiful life.''--Demetria Martinez
From Rebirth of Wonder
Patriarch in the Midwest
Where grandfather dipped his pen I burn incense. His inkwell
a bronze pagoda laced with oriental trees and fern.
Winged serpents crawl along the tray, a butterfly etched in the roof
waits to rise with the smoke of sandalwood.
Grandfather was a dragon from the north whose nature rejected
the mystical East, the solitary path to Nirvana.
Jehovah wasn't a breath from within, but a force like a winter storm.
Sin could destroy the household or locusts reap the harvest.
Did Scandinavians travel too far inland losing sight of the sea?
All that snow filling the hollows in a man's mind.
Grandfather talked to God in English and Norwegian, like engaging
the captain of a ship. His sermons charted the open spaces,
As if words could finally cut clear between good and evil.
From his pulpit in Minnesota Grandfather could see the ocean.
