Author Description

From Booklist The biographical note in Barr's collection outlines a business career, implying that poetry is a hobby for Barr. His poetry is hardly amateurish, though. It is witty in the old, complimentary sense of being incisively intelligent. Barr is especially gifted at descrying cosmic implications in common things and occupations. In "Wisteria," he sets out to prune and, observing how the plant grows, realizes that, with the vine, there is "God in my garden, rooted good." In "The Brotherhood of Morticians," an undertaker dinner speaker asserts that his profession has led him to see science and religion melded: "I tell you, World Without End is a statement of geology." "Articles of War," a sequence of poems reflecting Barr's Vietnam War naval service, drops one hint of how his magisterial observation became habitual: safe aboard a destroyer, he could "stare down into waterburn" and indulge "This urge to enter what we see." To see with him is to plumb depths that yield profound rewards. Ray Olson Product Description Hard to Find book