About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherRed Hen Press

ISBN-101597094692

ISBN-139781597094696

eBay Product ID (ePID)80126268

Product Key Features

Book TitleBeasts and Violins

Number of Pages104 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2010

TopicGeneral

GenrePoetry

AuthorCaleb Barber

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.5 in

Item Weight5.6 Oz

Item Length9 in

Item Width6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN2009-045119

Dewey Edition22

ReviewsCaleb Barber currently works in an aerospace machine shop, where he often composes his poems on a clipboard while delivering machined parts. Some of than rugged heavyweight material can be found in the sounds and rhythms and intentions of his unusual poems. He also worked in Arizona, Alaska, and Montana--and much of the flavor, fervor, and unflinching eye for realistic detail that readers find meaningful in Richard Hugo's work can be found here, though Barber is by no means derivative. For one so young, he has an unusually mature, self-assured and convincing voice that seems to me full of promise. --David Wagoner, Caleb Barber currently works in an aerospace machine shop, where he often composes his poems on a clipboard while delivering machined parts. Some of than rugged heavyweight material can be found in the sounds and rhythms and intentions of his unusual poems. He also worked in Arizona, Alaska, and Montana-and much of the flavor, fervor, and unflinching eye for realistic detail that readers find meaningful in Richard Hugoâ€™s work can be found here, though Barber is by no means derivative. For one so young, he has an unusually mature, self-assured and convincing voice that seems to me full of promise. -David Wagoner, Caleb Barber's fortuitous debut onto the American poetry scene strikes me as every bit as consequential and clarifying as those of his recognizable mentors-Spicer, Hugo, Wright and Carver. Having absorbed them, he's done what no one could have taught him: given honest and singular voice to the painful extremities of being both beast and violin, brutish and fragile, mired in the flesh, yet bent on not being entirely at its mercy. Lorca wrote of the sphinx dropping "a stone roof on the lyrical butterflies." Barber's uncompromising dialogues with the animal side of being human, similarly crushes our illusions, our too pretty notions of ourselves. In razor's edge language, he breaks open the mad harmonica of our unreasonable hungers, our tender fumblings, and our unpredictable natures. What I greatly admire, however, is that he is writer enough to leave us with an uneasy feeling of having been demolished and perhaps not exactly rebuilt-or not anyhow in a lyrical, transformative way, but rather in the solid and fecund way of mushrooms gathered as bounty from sites of decay. -Tess Gallagher, Caleb Barber is a large talent without any time for language that doesnâ€™t strike and haunt. With his raw, chilling voice, Barber resuscitates the American narrative poem-a species dying into the anecdotal-so that it stands up again and sings. This book makes a reader more honest, more unflinching in face of the hard beauties of being alive. -Katie Ford, Caleb Barber currently works in an aerospace machine shop, where he often composes his poems on a clipboard while delivering machined parts. Some of than rugged heavyweight material can be found in the sounds and rhythms and intentions of his unusual poems. He also worked in Arizona, Alaska, and Montana-and much of the flavor, fervor, and unflinching eye for realistic detail that readers find meaningful in Richard Hugo's work can be found here, though Barber is by no means derivative. For one so young, he has an unusually mature, self-assured and convincing voice that seems to me full of promise. -David Wagoner, Caleb Barber's fortuitous debut onto the American poetry scene strikes me as every bit as consequential and clarifying as those of his recognizable mentors--Spicer, Hugo, Wright and Carver. Having absorbed them, he's done what no one could have taught him: given honest and singular voice to the painful extremities of being both beast and violin, brutish and fragile, mired in the flesh, yet bent on not being entirely at its mercy. Lorca wrote of the sphinx dropping "a stone roof on the lyrical butterflies." Barber's uncompromising dialogues with the animal side of being human, similarly crushes our illusions, our too pretty notions of ourselves. In razor's edge language, he breaks open the mad harmonica of our unreasonable hungers, our tender fumblings, and our unpredictable natures. What I greatly admire, however, is that he is writer enough to leave us with an uneasy feeling of having been demolished and perhaps not exactly rebuilt--or not anyhow in a lyrical, transformative way, but rather in the solid and fecund way of mushrooms gathered as bounty from sites of decay. --Tess Gallagher, Caleb Barber's fortuitous debut onto the American poetry scene strikes me as every bit as consequential and clarifying as those of his recognizable mentors--Spicer, Hugo, Wright and Carver. Having absorbed them, he's done what no one could have taught him: given honest and singular voice to the painful extremities of being both beast and violin, brutish and fragile, mired in the flesh, yet bent on not being entirely at its mercy. Lorca wrote of the sphinx dropping "a stone roof on the lyrical butterflies." Barber's uncompromising dialogues with the animal side of being human, similarly crushes our illusions, our too pretty notions of ourselves. In razor's edge language, he breaks open the mad harmonica of our unreasonable hungers, our tender fumblings, and our unpredictable natures. What I greatly admire, however, is that he is writer enough to leave us with an uneasy feeling of having been demolished and perhaps not exactly rebuilt--or not anyhow in a lyrical, transformative way, but rather in the solid and fecund way of mushrooms gathered as bounty from sites of decay. --Tess Gallagher, Caleb Barber is a large talent without any time for language that doesn't strike and haunt. With his raw, chilling voice, Barber resuscitates the American narrative poem-a species dying into the anecdotal-so that it stands up again and sings. This book makes a reader more honest, more unflinching in face of the hard beauties of being alive. -Katie Ford, Caleb Barber currently works in an aerospace machine shop, where he often composes his poems on a clipboard while delivering machined parts. Some of than rugged heavyweight material can be found in the sounds and rhythms and intentions of his unusual poems. He also worked in Arizona, Alaska, and Montana--and much of the flavor, fervor, and unflinching eye for realistic detail that readers find meaningful in Richard Hugo's work can be found here, though Barber is by no means derivative. For one so young, he has an unusually mature, self-assured and convincing voice that seems to me full of promise. --David Wagoner, Caleb Barberâ€™s fortuitous debut onto the American poetry scene strikes me as every bit as consequential and clarifying as those of his recognizable mentors-Spicer, Hugo, Wright and Carver. Having absorbed them, heâ€™s done what no one could have taught him: given honest and singular voice to the painful extremities of being both beast and violin, brutish and fragile, mired in the flesh, yet bent on not being entirely at its mercy. Lorca wrote of the sphinx dropping â€œa stone roof on the lyrical butterflies.â€� Barberâ€™s uncompromising dialogues with the animal side of being human, similarly crushes our illusions, our too pretty notions of ourselves. In razorâ€™s edge language, he breaks open the mad harmonica of our unreasonable hungers, our tender fumblings, and our unpredictable natures. What I greatly admire, however, is that he is writer enough to leave us with an uneasy feeling of having been demolished and perhaps not exactly rebuilt-or not anyhow in a lyrical, transformative way, but rather in the solid and fecund way of mushrooms gathered as bounty from sites of decay. -Tess Gallagher, Caleb Barber is a large talent without any time for language that doesn't strike and haunt. With his raw, chilling voice, Barber resuscitates the American narrative poem--a species dying into the anecdotal--so that it stands up again and sings. This book makes a reader more honest, more unflinching in face of the hard beauties of being alive. --Katie Ford, Caleb Barber is a large talent without any time for language that doesnrs"t strike and haunt. With his raw, chilling voice, Barber resuscitates the American narrative poem-a species dying into the anecdotal-so that it stands up again and sings. This book makes a reader more honest, more unflinching in face of the hard beauties of being alive. -Katie Ford

Dewey Decimal811/.6

Table Of ContentI 3 The False Twin 4 Black Omen 5 Dear Old Dads 6 Old Savage 7 Pace 8 False Eulogy for the Stillaguamish River... 10 Addressing a Month of Guilt, Driving Near the Camano Island Exit of Interstate 5 11 Captain Fidalgo 13 Craft Island Hunters Wreck the Day 14 Machined Parts to Monroe 15 To the Man Driving I-5 with a Rabbit on His Shoulder 17 Report 18 Breakfast with My Best Friend, Who Otherwise Fried Eggs for Pay 19 Robotic Dawns 20 From the Employee Kitchen 21 The Blue Collar Artist 22 My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter 23 Blue Stilly 24 Tavern Woman 25 Over Breakfast II 28 For the Topless Girls in the Brewery Gulch 30 The Unofficial Mayor of Bisbee Arizona 32 This Southwestern State 34 What I Liked Best About Living in East Missoula 35 The Buck 36 Into Days Between Snow 38 House on Colorado Avenue 40 What I Could Have Done to East Missoula 41 Trans Wales 42 Horse Drawn Boat 43 Farming in County Sligo, County Leitrim 45 Piebald Birth on Josie''s Makeshift Farm 47 I Went in with My Hands Up 48 Beasts and Violins 50 Camping with Mad, Far from Montana 52 Now that the Brown Pelicans have Flown Elsewhere 54 Past the Cascades 55 In the Morning It''s Evil on the Bedside Table 56 They Couldn''t Even Kill Their Television 57 The Paranoid III 60 Bellingham''s Favorite Son 61 When I Said 62 What All Foxes Know (Two Ways Out of their Burrow) 63 Teaching the Beasts 64 Small Engines 66 In a Twilight Town 67 An Upstream Tow for an Early Date 68 At the Dedication 70 Lord of Spores 71 A Morning at Adrift 72 Fixed Beasts 73 Heart Lake; or, Poem for the Mistaken Boy 74 Spooky Portrait 75 The Fair Kaleetan , Between Friday Harbor and Anacortes

SynopsisBeasts and Violins is a collection of American narrative poetry addressing themes of life and work in the western United States. The poems read like broken country songs sung from a paved farm: dead deer and train trips, a dog at the edge of the fire. Beasts and Violins begins with a dark birth and finishes at peace on the water, with, Beasts and Violins is a collection of American narrative poetry addressing themes of life and work in the western United States. The poems read like broken country songs sung from a paved farm: dead deer and train trips, a dog at the edge of the fire. Beasts and Violins begins with a dark birth and finishes at peace on the water, with the necessary stops in between.

LC Classification NumberPS3602.A7594B43 2010