Betsy Johnson
BETSY JOHNSON’s manuscripts have been finalists in the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, the National Poetry Series Competition, and the University of Wisconsin Poetry Prizes. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review (online), Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, and Alaska Quarterly Review. She lives in Minnesota and teaches at a small liberal Arts College.
dumb takes readers on a strange ride. In 2018, Betsy Johnson was diagnosed with cancer and underwent chemo and radiation, all while her marriage was falling apart. She told no one. Chemo brain, fear, and grief left her, a college professor of over 20 years, cognitively impaired. In the aftermath, her scattered thoughts found solace in the Oxford English Dictionary. Its collection of voices from centuries past showed her that a weird and wild intelligence ought never to be hidden under a bushel. Best let it come roaring out.
The poems in Betsy Johnson’s dumb recover speech for the stricken, mine wonder from the brokenness of body and marriage, and remake ceremony into a vital part of survival. With a singular diction and formal inventiveness, Johnson’s poems burn new pathways between the unsayable and life-affirming utterance.— Christopher Bolin, author of Anthem