Hags on Tractors

In these memoir-textured poems, Penny Johnson puts us in the driver's seat-of a tractor that is-and shows us what it means to be a mature, rural woman grappling with the land and its seasonal weather changes, as well as the unique challenge of leading this life amidst a male-dominated field.

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"In Hags on Tractors, Penny Johnson's poems enter the land and finger the coloring change of beige mushroom, vermillion tomatoes, evergreen rosemary, fat-thumbed blackberries, magenta holly hocks in her deeply porous study under the unforgiving sky. She ingests this place, [a]s if land can hold still all it burns, buries and brings alive."

-Beatrix Gates, author of The Burning Key: New & Selected Poems (1973-2023)

"Johnson thumbs her nose at tradition, engaging us through a structure which floats and spins and turns in on itself....her poems bring the rural scene to life with all its sights, smells, sounds, tastes and challenges"

-Susan Blair, editor of The Shrub-Steppe Poetry Journal, author of A Howling and What Remains of a Life

"The power of these poems is due to the simple fact that Johnson has invented a language using English words that resembles to great effect the nature of trauma, disassociation, sexuality, cars, boys, horses."

-Michael Kline, author of When I Was a Twin