Review: Truth and Healing: Tatiana Johnson-Boria’s “Nocturne in Joy”
Truth and Healing: Tatiana Johnson-Boria’s Nocturne in Joy
Reviewed by Livia Meneghin
Full of courage, grief, testimony, and hopeful imagining, Tatiana Johnson-Boria’s Nocturne in Joy (Sundress Publications, 2023) insists on facing the truth. Johnson-Boria acts as guide through personal and collective pasts, along the way honoring African-American literary luminaries such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Lucille Clifton. Through a blend of experimental and traditional forms, Johnson-Boria creates space for play while readers process complex emotions surrounding mental health, family dynamics, and societal systems of oppression, all the while finding healing.
The opening poems of Nocturne in Joy paint a vivid picture of the speaker navigating change and life alongside parents and siblings. In “My Mother and I Loiter,” readers are immersed in a seemingly simple scene between a mother and daughter. Johnson-Boria’s speaker explains how “she tries to blow her cigarette / smoke away from me. / She doesn't know much / about me anymore / but she knows I've always / hated the smoke.” The mother figure is presented as both capable and incapable, as considerate to her daughter but also unable to truly connect. “It is hard for both of us / to breathe,” for example, clearly indicates tension. Gracefully, the poem does not place harsh judgement on why the dynamic is as such, instead holding space for empathy.
Another poem that exhibits such attentiveness amidst a difficult backdrop is “My Brother Outruns a Dog on W. Concord St.” The specificity in the title, as well as the opening sentence, “It is 1999,” signify reality and truth, that the poem should be read literally. And in many ways, Johnson-Boria wants this from readers. Throughout the large single stanza, she provides images like, “Our legs drag from school, straight home our mother says, every morning. It is afternoon.” Readers can clearly hear the mother’s voice; such a small detail speaks loudly to the family dynamic, the mother’s priority. Later, as this auto-poetry continues down the page, the images unravel: “My father teaches the boy about fire” and, when the speaker’s brother encounters the dog, “Our bodies still suspended.” Johnson-Boria expertly paces the poem with a combination of longer hyper-realistic sentences with shorter punctuated moments. Within one narrative, Johnson-Boria offers readers a commitment to the truth and a promise of artistry for the following pages.
“Black Womxn are Violets,” later in the collection, features footnotes that expand meaning from three tercets. The lines at the top of the page are densely imagistic— its language is extracted carefully from writing by Alice Dunbar Nelson. Johnson-Boria writes of a god, and then invites readers to learn more of what this particular word insinuates: “an origin, or ancestors, or root, or seed, or the uproot of it all.” The footnote sets up a worldview within which readers can situate the entire collection. What is holy and what connects people is ultimately both grounded and inherent in the act of ungrounding; this duality should always be treated with respect and diligence as it is necessary for survival.
Nocturne in Joy, as a whole, is an act of reverence. One of the hearts of the collection, “After Autumn,” is dedicated to students at Orchard Gardens Middle School in Roxbury, Massachusetts. For most of them, taught canonical poetry and creative writing is not representative of their identities and experiences. Johnson-Boria writes on the magic of when culture mirrors young minds:
How pure it is to be
deathless 12-year-old
laugh filled with glitterlike Jahi’s nails
who look like Cardi’s
Positive examples of beauty and joy are essential for the growth of community, especially for protecting its children. Johnson-Boria’s speaker of “After Autumn” remixes and refocuses the lens through which her students learn poetry by subverting tradition; she sketches a young Black girl “as fruit red shining optimism of being alive.” This poem speaks to the essential nature of cultivating connections between generations.
Many poems within the collection provide sanctuary from a world of violence and harm. Written for Breonna Taylor, “Breonna, The Beautiful” is a recentering, a reflection on the peace of sleep before Taylor was murdered. Johnson-Boria speaks to
The peace of hours
Where the bodies
Rest, awaiting sun
The days of faded dream
You left behind
On the journey between
Today and tomorrow
Before the shattering
Before Who is it?
Who is it?
You
Heavenly hum
Among sheets
Who?You rest.
You rest.
You rest.
Taylor is referred to in the second person, and the free verse format creates an intimate atmosphere for a direct address. Still, Johnson-Boria cleverly turns her lines with poetic consideration. As a standalone line, “You left behind” acknowledges how American society has let Taylor and countless others down, through actions from abandonment to intentional violence. This same “you,” a few lines down, is isolated and alone. But Johnson-Boria doesn’t end the poem in a shattering or in questions stemming from fear. Instead, she uses repetition to reinforce tenderness and love.
Nocturne in Joy is simultaneously ode and elegy, nocturne and aubade, joy and longing. With a deep attention to poetic form and respect for the figures depicted here in verse, Johnson-Boria exemplifies what it means to be a great contemporary American poet. Writing this review, nor my reading experience of this beautiful collection, could have been possible without recognition to the connections between other incredible artists; this is also Johnson-Boria’s project, with communal honoring being integral to its creation. In the company of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen and Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard, Nocturne in Joy’s storytelling and the urgency of Johnson-Boria’s poetic voice together depict a three-dimensional world that is essential to know and share widely.
About Livia Meneghin
Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of the chapbook Honey in My Hair and is the Sundress Publications Reads Editor. She earned a Writers' Room of Boston Poetry Fellowship, Breakwater Review's 2022 Peseroff Prize, and Second Place in The Room Magazine's 2023 Poetry Contest. Her writing has found homes in Gasher, Thrush, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Emerson College, where she now teaches writing and literature. She is a cancer survivor.
About Tatiana Johnson-Boria
Tatiana Johnson-Boria (she/her) is the author of Nocturne in Joy (2023). She’s an educator, artist, and facilitator who uses her writing practice to dismantle racism, reckon with trauma, and to cultivate healing. She’s an award-winning writer who’s received distinguished fellowships from Tin House, The Massachusetts Cultural Council, The MacDowell Residency, and others. Tatiana completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College and teaches at Emerson College, GrubStreet, and others. Find her work in or forthcoming at The Academy of American Poets, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, among others. She’s represented by Lauren Scovel at Laura Gross Literary.
