Poetry

Please contact me or click on a link below if you'd like to buy a book.

Please also contact me if you are interested in having me give a poetry reading, workshop or panel, or speak to your creative writing students. I have spoken/given readings most recently at the Kalamazoo Poetry Festival, Purdue University Northwest, Whitworth University, the Indiana Faith and Writing Conference, Eastern Mennonite University, Bluffton College, the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College, and the New England Young Writer's Conference at Breadloaf, among others.

Welcome to Steel Toe Books - BASIC DISASTER SUPPLIES KIT by Marci Rae Johnson

"What's most shocking about this collection isn't Marci Rae Johnson's flip and lippy bedfellowing with world dictators and anemic communist manifestors--nor even her heretical takedown of our most beloved and saintly Mister Rogers (in the opening poem, no less!). What's truly arresting in these poems is her reverential treatment of deeply spiritual matter--and the tension that these opposing forces create. In other words, she renders unto Caesar what's his, and to God, what's God's. It's a book

The Eyes the Window: Marci Rae Johnson, Christopher Howell, Thom Caraway: 9780989035934: Amazon.com: Books

Marci Rae Johnson's debut collection of poems. Luminous and arresting, these poems draw the reader into the world of the poem and see through the speaker's eyes. Lyric and lovely, we find the common, but newly revealed, a world always present but rarely seen. Contest judge Christopher Howell says, "The book thrusts us into linguistics and semiotics, but does so by means of a kind of picqaresque love story, which is in part also the story of Johnson's own writing of the story and of our reading i
Speaking of Marvels •

Marci Rae Johnson

What are some of your favorite chapbooks? Or what are some chapbooks that have influenced your writing? Two of my favorite chapbooks recently have been Ghost House, by Hannah Notess and Thirteen Small Apostrophes, by Jonathan Weinert. (Disclaimer: these authors are both friends of mine.) What might these favorite or influential chapbooks suggest about you and your writing? Hannah Notess’s poems often combine pop culture with religion, which is something that I like to do as well. My favorite