Midlife Abecedarian
(By Melissa Fite Johnson)
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With deep, unapologetic attention to the revelations of midlife, Melissa Fite Johnson’s Midlife Abecedarian reads as devotional to the miraculous present and as fearless, honest reckoning with the past. What does it mean to find peace, to be grounded in our own right at the midpoint of our lives, even as “God is a glass / drying on the counter,” even as “the wind insists” and “every blade of grass bristles”? Who are we as women if we do not choose to be mothers? Who are we as women if we choose to love ourselves and to be loved? Midlife Abecedarian accounts for what remains unresolved in our histories, but it also insists that we acknowledge the sacred and ordinary moments of daily life as they unfold. In this striking collection, Johnson acclaims the power of forging one’s own path, in a world which tries relentlessly to define us.
—Joan Kwon Glass, Night Swim
Midlife Abecedarian is a book of conversations—with other poets, with pop culture, with family members and friends, with a younger self. If you are a member of “Generation Catalano,” to whom the book is dedicated, you will see yourself in this book, especially in the moments that wrestle with the fantasies sold to us in the 1990s and how they warped our sense of self and desire (“though what did I ever see in Jordan? Obviously / Rickie Vasquez the real treasure here”). In this book, the past is often a source of grief and confusion, while the present offers respite and clarity. Johnson writes with candor, navigating the terrain of middle-aged womanhood with wit and compassion. Johnson portrays the joys of middle age, even when they look different from what we imagine when we’re young: “We can forget, / X-ing off to-do lists, / yawning, but this is the / zenith of our lives. Yes, this.”
This collection revels in formal skill and inventiveness, filled with sonnets, villanelles, pantoums, and of course abecedarians as well as free verse and prose poems. These poems invite the reader to engage not only with the contemporary but also with American literary tradition, particularly represented by Whitman, who appears in several poems as a kind of ornery muse. In response to Whitman’s cosmic perspective, Melissa Fite Johnson asks us to pay attention to the inescapable, ineffable texture of the now: “I am trying to write the present. / A quiet night, a photo of a moment // I wouldn’t think to photograph. Isn’t this / the origin of all poems? The blink, the breath.”
—Laura Passin, Borrowing Your Body
In Midlife Abecedarian, Johnson “miracles” the ordinary, claiming “no one wants to hear that shit” and then “writing the opposite.” She states, “I was beginning,” as she is, and as we all are, every day, beginning anew. These poems insist on vulnerability, on NOT pretending, as they urge the reader to believe that “there are many paths to happiness.” The speaker is inviting—part 90’s teen, part woman, part teacher, part poet. This book is one of those paths. These poems are a balm, offering, “This is why / we’re here—to live and to die, for someone to care.” Isn’t that the point of poetry? To find magic in the ordinary? She admits that loving her life might not be a popular opinion, but it is. We should all be so lucky. Let these poems inspire love, attention and overall, care.
—Leah Umansky, Of Tyrant”
