The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly

Denis Johnson’s latest book, Tree of Smoke, a Vietnam novel more than a decade in the writing, won the National Book Award last year. I knew of Johnson from Jesus' Son (the movie, not the book, though I was aware of the latter before the former), and had read a lot about him, though nothing by him. He keeps a low profile, and is not the most prolific writer. I had an idea what the poems in his collected and new edition, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly (published in 1995) might be like, and I was right, though my preconceived notions may have been somewhat undercooked.

Johnson's poetry has a lot of sadness in it, mixed with ennui – to me, an odd combination, or perhaps difficult to make interesting. I found him very easy to read, which here is a good thing. (In a different poet, this wouldn't necessarily be the case.) His language flows smoothly and easily, but I was sometimes taken out of the poems by his use of the lowercase “i” instead of “I,” which, this side of e.e. cummings smacks of affectation. (Come to think of it, it does in Cummings, too; this disappears in the later poems.) I also admit to being biased against poems about poetry, or poems that talk about poetry in an outright way, such as “Falling,” which begins,

There is a part
of this poem where you must
say it with me, so
be ready, together we will make
it truthful...

Poetry as the subject of a poem is, to me, as difficult to make work as movies about movies, or songs about songs. I have no qualms with songs about movies, or poems about songs, but when I'm inside a poem I like to get lost in it, and not be reminded of where I am – a kind of willful abandon. Johnson certainly doesn't go overboard here, but I believe jettisoning all the references to POEM or POETRY would not detract from the core of whatever Johnson is trying to get at.

In the end, I enjoyed The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly and would look forward to reading more of Johnson's poetry. He's also been a playwright, so even considering the massive critical success of Tree of Smoke, one can hope he returns to his apparent first love as a writer.