The Boxer of Quirinal Buy Now! All animals—from majestic herons to humble inchworms—face challenges in their quest for survival. But humanity must confront an additional obstacle: the ongoing presence of war. So, how do we live with it? The poems in The Boxer of Quirinal delve into the heart of this profound and unanswerable question. Longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection. Purchase on Amazon The Subcutaneous Art Book Cover Sign up to receive poems and brief thoughts about the state of the art of poetry a couple of times a month.
As a welcome gift, I’ll send you my free, digital chapbook The Subcutaneous Art: A Collection of Short Essays on Poetry on signup. Sign Up Now
South China Sea Poem Video The South China Sea:
A Poetry Film by John Barr
"The South China Sea" is excerpted from the book The Boxer of Quirinal (Red Hen Press, 2023) by John Barr, which is available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and in independent bookstores.

A Businessman/Poet? 

How can that be? For no very good reason I can think of, the idea of the Businessman/Poet intrigues the reading public no end. (If a surgeon plays the violin in a chamber group no one gives it a second thought.) Perhaps the two stereotypes, the “hardnosed” businessman and the “Romantic” poet, are at opposite […]

How I Come Up with a Poem

People often ask me how I come up with my poems. While I can’t provide a set rule for how poems come to me, or how I write them, here’s a little story about how one poem came to me. One snowy January day I was looking for a sales slip in order to exchange […]

A New Poetry for a New Century

A century ago the early Modernists, in their mania for the experimental, pushed all the boundaries of poetry. The traditional verse forms of 19th century poetry were abandoned for a century of free verse. The nostalgic poetry of the Edwardians (Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?) gave […]

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As a welcome gift, I’ll send you my free, digital chapbook The Subcutaneous Art: A Collection of Short Essays on Poetry on signup.

This collection comes from my lifelong engagement with poetry—an obsession that has never let go. Together, we’ll explore questions like: What makes a poem, a poem? Can a poet be wrong on everything—and the poem still be right?

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