The Hundred Fathom Curve

“Nothing has a right to the space it occupies” says John Barr in one of his poems, and this tough-minded remark is typical of the skeptical eye his work casts upon the thousand-thinged world. Barr’s speaker is wary of what is “arty and not true” and is often in despair to see “what one must do to excel.” Nonetheless these poems are full of admiration for creation, and the created—geological schist and Hudson River divers, spiderwebs, and hydroelectric dams. The Hundred Fathom Curve is a panoramic suite, meditating on means and ends, interrelationships; nature and history. Lucid, discursive, taut in phrasemaking, lit by memorable images, these poems are lively, probing and finally convey the pleasures of an especially thoughtful and wide-ranging amazement. —Tony Hoagland

“John Barr is a poet of elegant saying rather than singing, and his subjects are the familiar guiding stars of our common life: love, its presence or absence; war; the physical world and, especially, as in the quiet but profound requiem, “The Dial Painters,” the investigative empathy toward others that keeps us civilized. Still, in these precise and thoughtful meditations, the music of spontaneity and rejoicing—that is of course behind everything—must from time to time break out: “I live in a settlement of two hundred bones,” he writes of himself; or remembers his father, with his ham radios, wanting to “travel in the company of light”; or with delicious humor, imagines the yard wisteria “Offspring of wistful and hysteria.”

“These are poems to read more than once: John Barr is excellent company at every visit. He is in fact an extraordinary man, both a poet of passion and the most delicate workmanship, and a man of the material world, especially the world of finance and diplomacy, where, I dare say, passion and delicate workmanship are also necessities. We, who honor literature, also live in the world—and it is to our betterment twice, then, that John’s excitement, exactitude, and caring are so large and devotional—thus he twice renders the world good service, including, in his poems for sure, much pleasure, good thought, and happiness.” —Mary Oliver