Tatiana Johnson-Boria

Reviews

Truth and Healing: Tatiana Johnson-Boria’s “Nocturne in Joy” in Honey Literary

Review of Nocturne in Joy in The Colorado Review

Praise for Nocturne in Joy

“How do we find strength to be vulnerable? To name our needs and what caused us harm? “An eclipse happens/ In my body, each/ Morning, I am 10mg/ Better than when I’ve/ Awakened,” she writes. What it is to grow into a Black woman from a Black girlhood, the tenderness and ferocity it demands (the combination of which live in Johnson-Boria’s lines), are given rich breath here. There’s joy — “Here they are dancing/ for how could they not” — and an awareness of how even long-ago wounds can continue to live in bodies. In the masterful title poem, she refers to herself as a “temporary survivor,” reminding us that we all are.” - Nina McLaughlin, The Boston Globe

“The dead and the living gather at the table of Tatiana Johnson-Boria’s atmospheric debut. Its multiple exposures reveal the shape of an intergenerational haunting; to witness is to exorcise. Proving the personal is not individual, these poems collapse the distance between private and collective despair, familial and world-historical violence, mundane and metaphysical relief. ‘Are these words happy or sad? // Does it matter? / If the song / is a rich croon / in the body?’ Nocturne in Joy is a survival song echoing across dimensions.” —Kemi Alabi, author of Against Heaven

“The poems in Nocturne In Joy rise from the threshing floor, holding both the grief of what it means to survive, and the tender-jubilation of what it means to live. Tatiana Johnson-Boria invites us not just to bear witness, but to be transformed by these vital offerings of vulnerability, truth and Black fortitude. At a time of uncertainty and a history of diasporic mourning, Johnson-Boria points us toward the horizon: while joy may commeth in the morning, we cannot deny its ‘Cadent glory’ at night: ‘it is never too much // never too much.’” —Aricka Foreman, author of Salt Body Shimmer

“Thick with magic, music, and ancestral longing, Tatiana Johnson-Boria’s Nocturne in Joy announces the arrival of a poet deftly reckoning with the complexities of history, collective and personal, and their wondrous and wounding entanglements. ‘Trace these lines, they lead to ruptured paradise…’ Johnson-Boria’s poems are a balm for our recovery” —Krista Franklin, visual artist and author of Too Much Midnight

“Tatiana Johnson-Boria’s Nocturne in Joy is an offering to the ancestors, a tender examination of familial boundaries, and a praise song to Black girls. Using formal play that is soft and deliberate, Johnson-Boria’s relationship to language is that of a skilled interpreter, an understanding lover. The poems in Nocturne in Joy are relentlessly intimate in their exploration of the past and in the claim Johnson-Boria makes to joy, her birthright. This brave collection is set on healing and resolve. Johnson-Boria is a necessary force fiercely cementing herself in the tradition of American poetics.” —Porsha Olayiwola, Boston Poet Laureate and author of I Shimmer Sometimes, Too