The Axe Lectures

Author: Brianna Johnson

Publisher: Spout Press (2017)

Brianna Johnson has performed an experiment in destruction: of forms, of identity, of personae. Her narrator(s) lead a procession toward revelation as ruin. About The Axe Lectures, Johnson writes: Here, Lizzie Borden walks freely. She performs. Talks. Instructs. Condoles with the speaker. Commits atrocities. Here, there is abuse of all kinds. Here, there is a poetic rabble of ghosts and murderers. Here, there is alcohol and addiction. Here, there is a heavily sexualized girlhood. The Axe Lectures kills as much as it mourns. It is a work of feral grace, sublime and ragged at once, sharing with us the contested self's constant struggle for reassembly.