Rogue States

The phrase `rogue states' has been conjured with deadly purpose by major world powers to describe weaker countries who have fallen out of favor with the West. Johnston's new collection adopts the phrase; serious illness is seen as a `rogue state,' a usurpation of the lived ordinary, a form of invasion. Other poems take on the everyday, the speculative, and contemplate the uses of the poetic imagination in a society where, in the poet's view, poetry itself is under siege. Politics and society can never be outside or beyond the poet's critical reach. At a time when poets and writers in less humanitarian societies than our own are suffering imprisonment, or much worse, we have, he would maintain, a duty to use our freedom to speak out against injustice, even at the risk of being labeled `rogue' ourselves. Fred has published nine collections of poems, four novels, and two collections of short stories.