Faith in Poetry - John Barton inspires with Hymn

Reviewed by E.G. Anderson (Monday Magazine, November 12 - 18, 2009)

Wisdom and passion run throughout John Barton’s new book of poetry, as he grapples with predestination, human connection and the inescapability of the self. As he revisits his past, Barton spans his childhood and possible future with a careful eye on his entanglements with places, times and people.

In a style that’s sparse and unindulgent, yet artful, Barton relives instances of despair, clarity and joy. These are poems steeped in nature and the human body. With language elaborate and occasionally obscure, Barton crafts lovely lines that invoke the pain of loss and the beauty that survives. Prose-like pieces, unraveling narratives, and vivid abstractions make up a compelling and haunting collection. As he writes in “Le Tombeau de Sylvia Plath,” “I wanted to believe in tenderness, but our age is not tender; there is no tender age.”

Hymn is heavy with loneliness and loss; with sex and glimmers of love. Attachments—romantic, familial and physical—fill poems that are at once distant and alive with intimacy. Barton seems to waver in his relationship with love and humanity as a whole, as he writes with the tormented voice of someone who fights to remain soft. This near contradiction creates pieces that conjure the emotion of a long-ago moment while viewing it with ambiguous detachment.

This collection shines with sadness and bliss, though decidedly more of the former. Autobiographical and bare, these fragments of verse are as sensually stunning as they are intangible and affecting. In Hymn, Barton has concocted perfect poetry for the tired, fragile, lonely and hopeful.