“Lyndon Johnson is the sort of poem I didn’t think any living American had the ability and ambition to write, a long poem that coheres, brilliantly, rather than breaking into fragments held together only by its author’s insistence that it’s a single poem. Nor did I think anyone likely in this bad time to write a poem in which I could see the America I thought I saw as a child, though I was a Black child—an America at least imagining itself toward justice. Lyndon Johnson reminds one that American poetry, and America itself, can be more.”—Shane McCrae

“This book is WILD. I could not stop shaking my head and smiling as I read it. I am overwhelmed by the sheer formal stamina of this poem/story/historical reimagining (but also the research, the sheer magnitude of the knowledge here is stunning) of a story and a figure we thought we knew. I was vexed by this book. I was as angry at this book as I am with our country. And, like the country itself, I’m bowled over by the generosity and daring and deep intimacy of this poem.”—Gabrielle Calvocoressi

“Jonathan Farmer’s wonderful book Lyndon Johnson attempts a poetic and historiographic feat whose ambition is somehow commensurate with its subject’s: to capture (in verse?!) a great man of history and, in an era in which the Great Man is itself a charged and embattled concept, grapple with both its power and its fundamental absurdity. That he succeeds is almost as astonishing as the fact that the result is incredibly fun to read, a ‘nonfiction poem’ that will have you turning pages gleefully, inhaling the jaw-dropping details Farmer’s uncovered.”—Dan Kois   

Lyndon Johnson focuses on the five-plus years of Johnson’s presidency (1963–1969), a tumultuous time in which the promise of progressive social programs and basic human rights was countered by a war that killed millions of people and devastated the lives of countless more. As Johnson tried to pull the United States closer to some of its professed ideals, he also undermined many Americans’ faith in government, the contradictions of which are still felt to this day.

Throughout a carefully wrought and narratively propulsive book-length poem, Jonathan Farmer implicates himself, questioning what it means to belong in America, amid widespread inequality and the great historical inheritance of violence. Farmer reflects on his own upbringing, his relationship with his father who served in Vietnam, and the implications of the sixties for our world today.

Unfolding over seven sections, plus an epilogue, the book begins immediately after John F. Kennedy’s death as Johnson is thrust into the seat of power, and spans the entire Johnson presidency, capturing both broad portions of history and fascinatingly minute detail. All the while we understand Farmer’s own frustration with America as it stands today, still far away from the ideals of the 1960s, still unable to fulfill its promise. Yet, ultimately, Lyndon Johnson is a hopeful work, filled with longing for a country that could still follow through on its putative ideals.