The Barons. This item is unavailable.The Barons

The poems of The Barons span 10 years of struggle with the spirit of Romance in the face of world-historical catastrophe: 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Great Recession. Once again we find ourselves in a waste land stained by spectacle, scabrous and benighted, a landscape populated by opportunists, idiots, amnesiacs, and chumps, unable to comprehend the disaster that has enfolded them. In spite of this the book is haunted by the ancient quest for reconciliation, for some kind of contact with the earth and with other people. From ironic pastoral to black satire to the gates of vision, this book enacts a 21st-century journey toward an elusive horizon of meaning and the paradox of "freedom's law."

JOSHUA COREY is the author of three other books of poetry, Severance Songs, Fourier Series, and Selah, as well as a novel, Beautiful Soul: An American Elegy. He and G.C. Waldrep edited The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral, an anthology of innovative contemporary nature poems. He lives in Evanston, Illinois and is an associate professor of English at Lake Forest College, and co-director of Lake Forest College Press / &NOW Books.