BOOK DETAILS
ISBN: 1636280919
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Format: Hardcover
Publication Date: 06/20/2023
Page Count: 96
Category: American - General
Language: English
The Boxer of Quirinal
by John Barr
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 by John Barr, a Vietnam veteran, delve into the heart of this profound and unanswerable question. With meditations on events as small as the albatross breeding and as monumental as the fall of Rome, the Battle of Shiloh, and the Normandy Landings, Barr interweaves past and present, nature and history, inviting readers to contemplate the connections.
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“John Barr’s collection takes its title from an ancient Greek statue that was unearthed after 2,000 years—a fitting emblem for a poet inspired by the deep connections between past and present, history and nature. Whether he is writing about mushrooms on a forest floor or a Civil War battle, Barr offers pleasures that are seldom found in contemporary poetry: a strong formal imagination and the company of an adventurous mind.”
—Adam Kirsch, author of The Discarded Life
“In his tenth book of poems, John Barr succeeds with an ambitious spectrum of form and content. His subject matter spans from classical to contemporary. Like his titled boxer, Barr contends with all sorts of challenges, and he prevails, whether encountering a haruspex or a utility company! Most outstanding is his epic on the South China Sea, where politics meets poetics and history tells a story with surprising strength and finesse.”
—Susan Kinsolving, author of Peripheral Vision
A Reader’s Companion to The Boxer of Quirinal
by John Barr
A Reader’s Companion to The Boxer of Quirinal offers illuminating commentary from John Barr on select poems from the book, complete with sample poems as well as Rockwell Kent-inspired illustrations created with the assistance of AI.
Dante in China
by John Bar
In John Barr's poems, the ancient masters encounter the modern world. Dante on a beach in China beholds the Inferno: "Flaring well gas night and day, / towers rise as if to say, / Pollution can be beautiful." Bach's final fugue informs all of nature. Villon is admonished by an aging courtesan. Aristotle finds "Demagogues are the insects of politics. / Like water beetles they stay afloat / on surface tension, they taxi on iridescence." And his afterlife: "When three-headed Cerberus greeted him / Socrates replied: I won't need / an attack dog, thank you. I married one."
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The Hundred Fathom Curve
by John Bar
The Hundred Fathom Curve chronicles the search for an American identity from the Vietnam war to 9/11. The poems, drawn from five previous collections and published over 40 years, include Barr s eye-witness accounts as a Navy veteran of Vietnam, and as a New Yorker who was present at 9/11. They explore the boundary of what is human with all that is not, and find things never to be as they seem. They follow the journey from nature into art, and the efforts of the artist to discover what it means to be human.
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Grace
by John Bar
The Adventures of Ibn Opcit is a two-volume mock epic of social satire. Grace, the first volume, is the master song of Ibn Opcit, a Caribbean gardener/poet condemned to die by torture. In a series of jailhouse monologues we hear him descant on justice, on creation, on America, on death and on life after death.
This excerpt was written 20 years ago, before Donald Trump entered politics.
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Opcit at Large
by John Bar
In book two, Opcit at Large, the poet pushes back on his oppressors in three adventures. In "The Afterdammit" Opcit tours, in the footsteps of Dante, the afterworld of the Inferno. In "Opcit en Afrique" he struggles to survive as poet laureate to Africa's newest President for Life. And Opcit, as "The Last Cosmonaut", orbits earth on the eve of the fall of the Soviet Union. He makes his flaming reentry with the dignity and strength of one who has survived and prevailed.
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