Tatiana Johnson-Boria’s Nocturne in Joy is an exercise in Black vulnerability through poetry. Johnson-Boria commands poetic forms flawlessly and fluently, using the form to her advantage in poems like Another Death, where the spacing between sentence fragments replicates the short anapestic breathing before death. With an unwavering voice turned towards the reality of growing up in a difficult childhood, within a larger oppressive system fueled by racism, sexism, and violence; this staggering collection offers glasses for a sharp-edged glimpse into what it is to be raised from a Black girl into a Black woman, and the trauma and healing born in the process.

“The dead and the living gather at the table of Tatiana Johnson-Boria’s atmospheric debut. Its multiple exposures reveal the shape of an intergenerational haunting; to witness is to exorcise. Proving the personal is not individual, these poems collapse the distance between private and collective despair, familial and world-historical violence, mundane and metaphysical relief. ‘Are these words happy or sad? // Does it matter? / If the song / is a rich croon / in the body?’ Nocturne in Joy is a survival song echoing across dimensions.”

—Kemi Alabi, author of Against Heaven

“The poems in Nocturne In Joy rise from the threshing floor, holding both the grief of what it means to survive, and the tender-jubilation of what it means to live. Tatiana Johnson-Boria invites us not just to bear witness, but to be transformed by these vital offerings of vulnerability, truth and Black fortitude. At a time of uncertainty and a history of diasporic mourning, Johnson-Boria points us toward the horizon: while joy may commeth in the morning, we cannot deny its ‘Cadent glory’ at night: ‘it is never too much // never too much.’”

—Aricka Foreman, author of Salt Body Shimmer

“Thick with magic, music, and ancestral longing, Tatiana Johnson-Boria’s Nocturne in Joy announces the arrival of a poet deftly reckoning with the complexities of history, collective and personal, and their wondrous and wounding entanglements. ‘Trace these lines, they lead to ruptured paradise…’ Johnson-Boria’s poems are a balm for our recovery”

—Krista Franklin, visual artist and author of Too Much Midnight 

“Tatiana Johnson-Boria’s Nocturne in Joy is an offering to the ancestors, a tender examination of familial boundaries, and a praise song to Black girls. Using formal play that is soft and deliberate, Johnson-Boria’s relationship to language is that of a skilled interpreter, an understanding lover. The poems in Nocturne in Joy are relentlessly intimate in their exploration of the past and in the claim Johnson-Boria makes to joy, her birthright. This brave collection is set on healing and resolve. Johnson-Boria is a necessary force fiercely cementing herself in the tradition of American poetics.”

—Porsha Olayiwola, Boston Poet Laureate and author of I Shimmer Sometimes, Too