“God Talk of the Gorge: Alaska Poems” by Eric Gordon Johnson, “The Divination of Salmon” by Vivian Faith Prescott and “Forced Landing” by David McElroy
The fantasy writer Anne Bishop once wrote, “There are some questions that shouldn’t be asked until a person is mature enough to appreciate the answers.” Three Alaskan poets who’ve survived childhood, varied and rich life experiences, and the loss of loved ones have a great deal to interrogate about life generally.
“Forced Landing”
By David McElroy; Cirque Press, 2025; 99 pages; $15.
David McElroy, the author of four previous books of poems, is a retired bush pilot and an extensive traveler. The poems in “Forced Landing” draw upon these aspects of his life, particularly his experiences in Southeast Asia. They are alive with evocative details and a lived-in appreciation of cultures and the many ways we can know the world.
Multiple references to the illness and death of a spouse entwine with reflections on music and art, while other poems address healing and new love. In “Hospice,” the narrator listens to hip music from the ’40s and ’50s “that is mostly palliative listening now.” “I like the line of patter Blaise Lantana / lays down to introduce the jazz greats / of yesterday who along with baseball / made us all Americans of one heart.” In “Kintsugi,” “The crash, the slow smash of loss coming on / is always there, but lacquer dusted with gold / writes calligraphy mending your breakage.”
Among McElroy’s Asian poems, a recurring theme is the tragedy of war. In “Bou Meng, S-21 Survivor,” “The little girl’s buried skirt that the wet season / soil pushed up seems to say / fifty years is nothing.”
In the emotionally taut title poem, “Forced Landing,” the narrator’s military plane is forced down, “the cockpit filling with the North Pacific. / Fast unbuckle, we don’t feel the cold. / No hatch doors, we kick and kick windows / like horses in a burning barn. . .” His guilt-ridden memories merge toward the end with a boyhood memory of a field of hay, a creek and a day he skipped school.
“The Divination of Salmon”
By Vivian Faith Prescott; Torrey House Press, 2026; 120 pages; $16.95.
“The Divination of Salmon” is Vivian Faith Prescott’s 14th book. The poems here, in varied forms, speak largely of the bond between people and salmon and are informed by her family’s generational reliance on salmon as well as much longer cultural connections.
Many of the poems feature “Salmon Woman.” This voice sometimes speaks from within an older story and more often seems to stand in for the poet herself. These poems, spread throughout the text, include “Salmon Woman Takes Field Notes,” “Salmon Woman Monitors Alaska’s Climate Costs,” “Salmon Woman Swims Through Her Own Myth,” and “Salmon Woman Longs for Spring.” Much of the content references the current decline in salmon populations and the effects of climate change on salmon and cultural survival.
In “She Left Her Deerskin Shoes on the Shore,” the narrator relates a traditional story about a young woman “running from a man she does not want to marry,” with a refrain “she becomes salmon.” “Salmon Woman’s hair is the seagrass, the willow on the shoreline bent from her ribs. We learn salmon and human and creation and grief and story are all connected.” The refrain “she becomes salmon” finally shifts to “I become salmon” and the narrator’s own wished-for ending to the story.
The decline and death of the narrator’s father enter the narratives as parallels to the salmon decline. In “Sonnet for Our Salmon,” — curiously, prose rather than in the form of a sonnet — “My father sits in his plastic chair, watching smoke curling up from the eves of the smokehouse roof. ‘This is what I do best’ he says, and I think of process: catching salmon and smoking fish. He finishes his sentence: ‘Watching the fish smoke is what I do best.’”
“God Talk of the Gorge: Alaska Poems”
By Eric Gordon Johnson; Cirque Press, 2026; 60 pages; $15.
“God Talk of the Gorge” is Eric Johnson’s debut poetry collection. Arranged in four sections, the poems speak to his early life growing up in Anchorage, various cruelties and the indifference of nature, the loss of his first wife, and “renewal.”
“Ways of Remembering,” is a list poem of thirteen parts, each relating to the narrator’s relationship to his father. “4. Sitting in our car outside, waiting for Dad, at thirty below, while the warm garage was full of everything but a car.”“12. Finding hidden trash bags stashed around the house because he couldn’t ask for help.”
In “Momentary Birds,” the narrator watches gleeful workmates rip swallows’ nests from under a bridge and kick them into a river. “Lobbing rocks, they chase the bobbing rafts of twigs. / Outstretched necks with baby beaks gaping as for food. / They laugh at tiny wings with frantic feathers / sinking beneath the cloudy water’s sun-dumbing daze.”
“Composting” is a reflective piece in which the narrator keeps up a practice of his wife’s after her death — turning the material in her compost bins. One bin holds new grass clippings and dead leaves, the next is decomposing matter, the third is peaty soil, “each shovelful brimming with life.” If composting itself brings these satisfactions, accompanying the bereaved through the process adds both ache and a new blossoming.
The “gorge” of the title appears in the final poem, “Middle Fork.” The narrator, standing above a cliff in misted trees, listens to the stream below and watches an owl with extended talons float over. “There will come a time when / I step down and count myself / a part of this and join / the god talk of the gorge.”
