Receiving this turned out to be pleasant surprise.

Barnett seems to find the sublime in the subway, in a discussion of religion, alone, or in a simple game played with the speaker's son. In addition to the slice of life moments, Barnett has 14 poems each titled "Chorus," which switch to third person and give these poems the feel of a Greek drama, the chorus being the collective refrain of the play.

I think the collective feel keeps each from staying pigeonholed as 'confessional' poetry -- we're challenged to see where we have had our feet in those shoes:

Chorus (Everyone asks)

Everyone asks what we're afraid of
but we aren't supposed to say.
We could put loneliness on the list.
We could put this list on the list,
its infinity. We could put infinity down.
Who knows why we're here, it's a "mystery."
We're getting older,
and when no one's watching
we climb right into it.

One that struck me, perhaps because of the ease with which she combines the daily and the eternal, not being mystical, not being trite. This is the last poem in the collection and seems to underscore the underlying theme.

Providence

This evening I shared a cab with a priest
who said it was a fine day to ride cross town

with a writer. But I can't
finish the play I said,

it's full of snow.
The jaywalkers

walked slowly, a cigarette warmed
someone's hand.

Some of the best sermons
don't have endings, he said

while the tires rotated unceasingly
beneath us.

All over town people were waiting
and doubleparked and

making love and waiting.
The temperature dropped

until the shiverers zipped their jackets
and all manner of things started up again.


I'm not sure this is a collection I would have picked out on my own, but the aha moments grow with additional readings. I will be reading more of the poet's work. ( )

I only sort of liked the poems in the first section, but the one in the middle, "Sweet Double, Talk-Talk" (37-60), was just beautiful. I think I'll check out Barnett's other work at some point.

Read the review on my blog here. ( )

Seemingly simple verse that explodes in meaning and emotion. ( )

It took me a while to connect with the poems in this collection. Some poems I had to reread several times until they began to click (though I think the distance had more to do with my headspace than with the poetry. Once it did click, though, I discovered poetry that took the everyday and commonplace and didn't so much as elevate it, as roll around in it, feeling the sharp and soft edges and appreciating them for what they are.

The collection is split in three sections.

The first, "Endless Forms Most Beautiful," features a dozen or so poems named "Chorus," which alternate with other poems with individual titles. The titled poems all deal with an "I" narrator, an individual, who could be the same individual in each case, while the Chorus poems all focus on a "We" narrator that takes up the song of the populace that circles the individual. Sometimes, while driving or walking down the street, I'll break out of my own personal narrative and be stunned by how many lives are going on around me, each with their own stories, their own internal monologues — reading "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" reminded me of that experience.

The second section, "Of All Faces," is comprised of a single long poems, called "Sweet Double, Talk Talk," a modern love story, full of sex and intimacy and distancing and coming round again. It's beautiful and subtle and bitter sweet, like love often is. I read this through a couple of times and connected deeper with it on the second reading.

The last section, called "The Modern Period," is a series of poems that approach everyday moments, such as visiting a doctor, and finds deeper resonance in each moment. ( )