Lawrence Johns

Love and Hate Lawrence Johns

Lawrence Johns' Love And Hate is an epic poem on the rise and fall of Haight-Ashbury. Not since Whitman has an American poet so confidently reinvented poetry and country in a single stroke. Billy Collins: "Heads of acid roll again, this time in verse." Linda Hurst: "Lawrence Johns' Love And Hate is a masterpiece of political allegory based on the radiant and tragic story of the Diggers, a whirlwind of new poetics, ruling passions and ancient identities summoned in sharp defense of individual freedom." G. S. Rowe: "We haven't seen such a psychologically tuned cast of characters since Chaucer and Shakespeare. Love and Hate is the most ambitious American poetry since Leaves of Grass---its freewheeling style carries a new epic form to catharsis. We confront the tragic nature of the American soul as history and philosophy without interference from the poet's voice. This is strange, ambivalent, this is genius."