Resurrection Fail - Softcover

Barger, John Wall

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1956005080 ISBN 13: 9781956005080

Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, 2021

Synopsis

As its title suggests, Resurrection Fail is a worthy paradox, blending John Wall Barger's enviable economy of style with a luxury of spirit that glimmers beneath both his speaker's fetching enthusiasms and deep sorrows. These poems capture how the world's beauty and brutality are bound together; that we fail and—if we're lucky—find the will to resurrect ourselves over and over again. But for all this poet's clear seriousness of purpose, there's a vivid, often witty life force here that reminds me that I'm glad to be alive. I really loved getting to know this book and I bet you will, too.

Erin Belieu

John Wall Barger’s poems win our respect with their hard truths and our love with their compassionate telling of them. With a breathtaking ferocity of feeling, his lyric narratives amble out of memory into surprise—surprise at the horrors we are capable of and at our resilience in enduring them. Following Kierkegaard’s belief that “Life can only be understood backwards,” Barger chases the receding years, the past revealed in a series of wrenching shocks: “Like the anatomy student I once met / who slid the sheet / off a corpse / and there was / his childhood crush.” This is essential poetry, a singular and vital record of the pain and joy that attend on living.

David Yezzi

Edition details

• Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil Publishing
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1956005080
• ISBN 13: 9781956005080
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Wong Matthew
• Number of pages: 100