Book Review :: Tangled in Vow & Beseech by Jill McCabe Johnson

Review by Jami Macarty

In Tangled in Vow & Beseech, Jill McCabe Johnson tangles with self as daughter, sister, mother, survivor, and poet; with an “unpredictable series / of geometries” in relationship with an intimate partner; with the “the weight / of weep and want and regret” of the most pressing socio-political issues of our contemporary time. The poet allows her speaker to get real about “another mass / moment” of gun violence, those “who fell in the path / of xenophobia,” “the silencing of women,” and the dangers of “indifference.”

While the poet “sit[s] with” the consequential and holds others to account, she assumes her ethical responsibilities as a citizen and an artist, insisting that the personal includes the public. Perhaps this collective of “all-too-human / foibles” accounts for McCabe Johnson’s poems being “leashed to form.”

In some cases, the poet determines form by the poem’s content. For instance, the poem “Boxed In” uses vertical lines to erect walls around horizontal textual lines, thereby boxing in the text: “| if I typed with an eye | toward balance | maybe each poem could carve a window | or box.” Received forms, such as the abecedarian, acrostic, apostrophe, elegy, epistle, and nocturne, claim space among poems that act as a “Travel Journal” and press release. The handful of contrapuntal poems, scattered throughout the book, offer readers multiple meaning combinations. The gesture of multiple possibilities of meaning makes sense because, throughout the collection, McCabe Johnson reaches beyond the unary and binary.

With her “eye | toward balance” and inclusion, Jill McCabe Johnson “breaks the bones of what we know. Resets them” to offer readers Tangled in Vow & Beseech, a book of both the “jurisdiction of the past” and an “edict of hope” for the future.

Tangled in Vow & Beseech by Jill McCabe Johnson. MoonPath Press, March 2024.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.