Johnson, Kendall

***“Each of the black boxes contains white pages, typed, one or two pages each, stapled at the top left corner. 300-500 word stories; all quite true, unfortunately. These are poetics of chaos. These are the stories I said I’d never write. The kind of stories, once heard, you can’t erase from your mind. Scenes you wish you’d never seen. Sensations you wish never to feel again. When I began writing, photography, and painting, I adopted what is rightly or wrongly termed the Hippocratic Oath that medical people are bound by: simply, do no harm. I’ve held these stories back.” “Kendall Johnson has been a firefighter, trauma psychotherapist, Vietnam War veteran, and mountain climber. He is also a writer, painter, and deep thinker. He is someone who has been drawn to painful places and many moments of the worst kind of violent rage and hatred. Black Box Poetics explores the worst moments of a life and draws us forward into a world where even after one has been shown darkness, light is possible.”—John Brantingham, author of Life, Orange to Pear