Awards

• Commended for L.A. Times Book Prize (Poetry) 2015
• Commended for Literary Award (Open Book) 2016

Overview

That art should once have been marked with this delicacy: always only one of each thing made, so that your poem has its one life on the sheet you have chosen for it, or the snapshot of the birthday party, everything in the room upended by the children's jubilation, survives only in the single defended piece of glass. Rick Barot was born in the Philippines, and received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the author of The Darker Fall and Want and teaches at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Full Product Details

9781941411032

Table of Contents

Reviews

At his best, Barot seamlessly weaves history, image, and etymology in ways that offer the reader new eyes to see language and the world it describes....Barot's poems transfix and transform through his remarkable ability to pack and unpack narratives within the space of an image. Publishers Weekly, starred review Rick Barot s careful, moving third collection...commemorates his grandmother, remembers his family s roots in the Philippines, considers his years in the Bay Area and in Tacoma, Wash. (where he lives now), all in the added harsh light of public history.... Here as in both his previous books, Barot s lines ask that we read them slowly, that we ask how he came to write them, how he can keep distressing the canvas/ of the personal ....[A] poet we can trust. The San Francisco Chronicle These poems are entranced by the intricacies of the mind, the mystery of its remarkable durability and frailty. Chord also involves a subtle yet consistent consideration of (white, male, heteronormative) cultural privilege and colonialism.... Chord brings us into a nuanced understanding of how we construct the world with our minds: You don t have to understand it / but you will carry it anyway.' Boston Review Chord is the capstone of a provocative trilogy. We can only hope it becomes the tenor in a forthcoming quartet. Where might we travel next, stylistically and thematically, with Barot s speaker? The last poem is awash in beginnings, a glissando of the beginning of, the beginning of, the beginning of. A book called Origin perhaps? A book called New Rain ? Whatever the title, know that I want it already. Lambda Literary The poems in Rick Barot s third collection, Chord, complicate and expand each other: the speakers memories and experiences quickly ripple out into the historical, global, and political....Throughout, Chord posits the lyric as a form of excavation, or disinterring, unraveling personal and global history into collective memory. Barot s poems move forward to go backward, in search of some primeval, primary stateas his speaker says in the end, I want from love only the beginning. Scout: Poetry in Review Rick Barot s poems are assured, finely composed structures in which memory and emotion often take startling, deeply moving turns. Ploughshares

Chord is the capstone of a provocative trilogy. We can only hope it becomes the tenor in a forthcoming quartet. Where might we travel next, stylistically and thematically, with Barot s speaker? The last poem is awash in beginnings, a glissando of the beginning of, the beginning of, the beginning of. A book called Origin perhaps? A book called New Rain ? Whatever the title, know that I want it already. Lambda Literary

At his best, Barot seamlessly weaves history, image, and etymology in ways that offer the reader new eyes to see language and the world it describes....Barot's poems transfix and transform through his remarkable ability to pack and unpack narratives within the space of an image. Publishers Weekly, starred review Rick Barot s careful, moving third collection...commemorates his grandmother, remembers his family s roots in the Philippines, considers his years in the Bay Area and in Tacoma, Wash. (where he lives now), all in the added harsh light of public history.... Here as in both his previous books, Barot s lines ask that we read them slowly, that we ask how he came to write them, how he can keep distressing the canvas/ of the personal ....[A] poet we can trust. The San Francisco Chronicle Chord is the capstone of a provocative trilogy. We can only hope it becomes the tenor in a forthcoming quartet. Where might we travel next, stylistically and thematically, with Barot s speaker? The last poem is awash in beginnings, a glissando of the beginning of, the beginning of, the beginning of. A book called Origin perhaps? A book called New Rain ? Whatever the title, know that I want it already. Lambda Literary

Author Information

Rick Barot was born in the Philippines, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and received his MFA from the The Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.He is the author of The Darker Fall and Want and teaches at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available