western eye press
BRAVE NEW PUBLISHING FOR A MULTI-MEDIA WORLD
POEMS by Richard Johnston
Rooting for Humanity
by Richard Johnston, 74 pages, $9.95 softbound
Curently available from amazon.com.
Rooting for Humainity is a collection of poetry by Richard Johnston ranging from the personal to the planetary. These poems arise from a warm heart and a sharp and skeptical intelligence. As a history professor and inveterate globe trotter, Johnston has spent a lifetime reflecting on mankind's follies and failures to live up to its ideals. His poetry spares no one, no creed, no doctrinaire craziness, but still manages to celebrate elemental and abiding human passions, and delights. A critique leavened with humor—these poems ring true. They will make you smile, although sometimes ruefully.
Under Control
Birth control
for some a sin to expiate
they hesitate to try it
Girth control
from wide-spread fear
of overweight
we leap on any diet
Mirth control
from deep distrust
of joy sensate
blue laws would deny it
Graveyard of Empires
These dark and angry moments
when a nation's heart must weep
lost people turned upon themselves
in a rashness of despair
lacking will to meet the task
for want of savoir faire
and leaders with the guts to ask
that we assume our due
are destined then to sorrow
we kill them and others who
might rise to meet tomorrow
O Kennedys, O Malcom X
O Martin Luther King
O countless sons of Uncle Sam
whose buried bones lie moldering
victims of monumental scam
black hole of soul called Vietnam
and even more repulsive yet
a therapy of shock and awe
to wipe the slate of history
inciting us to just forget
to spend our blood for oil and power
avenging now those shattered towers
where all this foolishness began
that graveyard called Afghanistan
About the poet
Richard Johnston grew up in an itinerant working family in the Pacific Northwest. His father, an agnostic socialist, devoted his energy to organizing railroad workers. During World War II, Richard served in the U.S. Army first as a private in infantry training and subsequently, as both a student and faculty member of the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps School at Holabird Signal Depot in Baltimore, Maryland. After the war, Johnston earned an Ed.D. at Columbia University under the G.I. Bill. While director of the American School in Paris, Johnston traveled extensively with his wife, photographer Mary Alice Johnston, a la bicyclette, across a recovering Europe almost devoid of automobiles. Back in the States, after teaching in three major universities, he became a founding faculty member of an experimental public affairs school at Sangamon State University (now the University of Illinois at Springfield) where he was also the publisher/editor of an academic journal "Community College Frontiers" (1976–1982).
When we published this collection, Richard Johnston was living in Colorado. As a retired Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Illinois at Springfield, Richard divided his time between various community service projects in Colorado and his second career as a writer. He always said writing twas "good therapy, better than religion and cheaper than psychiatry." He published two novels. The first, The Big Lie, set in Paris in the 1950s. The second, The Circle Broken, set in 17th century Quebec (La Nouvelle France) and relates the romance of a Wendat Indian girl and a young Frenchman, an indentured apprentice to the explorer Robert Cavalier de La Salle. Johnston hoped to use historical fiction to convince readers that violence is not power and that humility in politics is an attribute of strength not weakness. Rooting for Humanity was his first collection of poetry.
WESTERN EYE PRESS • PO BOX 2 CRESTONE CO 81131