"The poems in Johnson's Memoir Poetic of a Naked Cop, inspired by the author's life as a soldier in Vietnam, a student in Berlin, a police officer in the U.S. heartland and his present life in suburban Washington, DC are riveting. With the commanding voice of a circus master, now serious, now playful, now caustic, now dreamy, Johnson presents an intriguing cast of characters--his persona-selves, to be sure, but also a high-wire artist, the mother of a slain teenager....A motif running throughout the book, in fact, is that of the theater, with the questions the theater raises of illusion and reality, identity, the purposes of art. The highly charged poems in Memoir Poetic will grip your mind long after you have finished reading. If you let their magic work, they may even cast new light on your own experiences, and how you tell the stories of your own life." -Nancy Prothro Arbuthnot