Houses

New and Selected poems by Don Barkin, a poet whose last collection was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Awards. These poems are both domestic and accessible, including many in rhyme and meter (the late Poet Laureate Philip Levine wrote that Barkin's poems show "wonderful skill"). These poems, written over a quarter century, have appeared in some of the country's most prestigious literary magazines, including Poetry, The Virginia Quarterly Review, the North American Review, and Prairie Schooner. They look back to a New Hampshire boyhood, and accompany the poet through two marriages, a successful teaching career, fatherhood, and a return to the woods in Massachusetts' Berkshire hills. A stint as a newspaper reporter gave birth to a collection of portraits, gathered here under the title, "Some People." Many of these poems live on the edge - between wilderness and civilization, between solitude and family life. They recall W.B. Yeats' remark, "Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric; of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry." These are crafted poems, and over the years, the author has passed on that craft in popular writing courses at Yale and Wesleyan universities. A section of newer poems occupy new territory and are philosophical in nature.