Inappropriate Sleepover
(The National Poetry Review Press, 2014)
(The National Poetry Review Press, 2014)
Meg Johnson’s collection, Inappropriate Sleepover, had me at page one. Her quirky and darkly humorous poems are as refreshing as they are clever, as disarmingly entertaining as they are provocative. Meg Johnson is a stunning addition to the American poetry scene. —Nin Andrews
In her debut collection of poems, Meg Johnson’s specialty is exposing the absurdity, humor and disturbing messaging in what we deem “sexy.” Inappropriate Sleepover is irrefutably funny — Johnson has a gift for timing and unexpected punchlines. But more significant, to me, is her bold examination of gender performance and objectification. These poems are littered with cast-off items of clothing and classic icons of femininity: Marilyn Monroe, Lolita, Betty Boop. If this book were sexy sweatpants (like those that appear in the book’s first poem), the back would be emblazoned with the word “subversive.” --Columbus Alive
Half siren song, half battle cry, Meg Johnson’s Inappropriate Sleepover is a debut collection that coaxes us out of our tightly-zipped sleeping bags and keeps us up until dawn with poems that resonate, beguile, and delight. Equally whimsical and poignant, Johnson’s voice introduces us to a new sort of poetry heroine: one who is undaunted by external forces that oppose her, and driven to excavate the most subtle nuances of human connection. These are poems to keep for yourself, and to share with your very best friends. —Mary Biddinger
Meg Johnson’s Inappropriate Sleepover lives up to its name as she brandishes a quirky and snappy whip of critique on the portrayal of women, their bodies, and modern, American cultural constructs. These free verse poems are unhitched from cultural norms, lines tight with immediacy, or loose with snark skimming across the pages. --Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment
In these poems, Meg Johnson dances on the narrow boundary dividing self-confidence from self-delusion. Always unsettled, her restlessness born from her awareness that the self is too big to fit, even when broken into parts, into the many and ever-proliferating boxes in which a self is expected to find its many homes, her speakers both celebrate and lament the quotidian by which they are enraptured: “If I was a tree I’d / want to be a pine because of the needles. People / would always be finding a piece of me.” And the celebrating, and the lamenting, are themselves both enrapturing. —Shane McCrae
This here is what a 'first book of poems' should look, feel, taste, sound and smell like. It is all in this book. --Galatea Resurrects
In her debut collection of poems, Meg Johnson’s specialty is exposing the absurdity, humor and disturbing messaging in what we deem “sexy.” Inappropriate Sleepover is irrefutably funny — Johnson has a gift for timing and unexpected punchlines. But more significant, to me, is her bold examination of gender performance and objectification. These poems are littered with cast-off items of clothing and classic icons of femininity: Marilyn Monroe, Lolita, Betty Boop. If this book were sexy sweatpants (like those that appear in the book’s first poem), the back would be emblazoned with the word “subversive.” --Columbus Alive
Half siren song, half battle cry, Meg Johnson’s Inappropriate Sleepover is a debut collection that coaxes us out of our tightly-zipped sleeping bags and keeps us up until dawn with poems that resonate, beguile, and delight. Equally whimsical and poignant, Johnson’s voice introduces us to a new sort of poetry heroine: one who is undaunted by external forces that oppose her, and driven to excavate the most subtle nuances of human connection. These are poems to keep for yourself, and to share with your very best friends. —Mary Biddinger
Meg Johnson’s Inappropriate Sleepover lives up to its name as she brandishes a quirky and snappy whip of critique on the portrayal of women, their bodies, and modern, American cultural constructs. These free verse poems are unhitched from cultural norms, lines tight with immediacy, or loose with snark skimming across the pages. --Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment
In these poems, Meg Johnson dances on the narrow boundary dividing self-confidence from self-delusion. Always unsettled, her restlessness born from her awareness that the self is too big to fit, even when broken into parts, into the many and ever-proliferating boxes in which a self is expected to find its many homes, her speakers both celebrate and lament the quotidian by which they are enraptured: “If I was a tree I’d / want to be a pine because of the needles. People / would always be finding a piece of me.” And the celebrating, and the lamenting, are themselves both enrapturing. —Shane McCrae
This here is what a 'first book of poems' should look, feel, taste, sound and smell like. It is all in this book. --Galatea Resurrects
