Sea Legs - Johnny Horton

Johnny Horton’s debut collection, Sea Legs, asks us to reflect on the ways we learn to survive in an unsteady and often unsafe world. Moving through subjects like gun violence, family trauma, religious existentialism, or fleeting romance, the poems question whether we construct the myth of ourselves through lived experience and hardship, or if who we are is largely inherited, shaped by forces beyond our control. The associative nature of Horton’s poetry pulls you through a range of unexpected connections, moving from naturalist facts like "The paper nautilus loses his penis while making love," to irreverent moments, like psychoanalyzing Julius Caesar’s Oedipal dreams or pointing out the drag show on display in the Sistine Chapel. Across twenty-three poems, Horton offers a mind in flux, never fully certain of what it believes. The collection’s underlying angst is tempered by his exploration of Roman antiquity, Greek mythology, American pop culture, and science. By the end of Sea Legs, you come away with a heightened awareness of the natural world, deeper empathy for human struggle, and a sharper sense of how unstable the idea of the self can be.