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Pink Moon
by Tina Barr
38 Poems ~ 92 pages
Cover Art
by Aamna Alee
Price: $17.00
Publisher: Jacar Press
ISBN #: 978-0-93681-55-5
To Order: https://jacarpress.com/pink-moon/
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
In a famous quote Emily Dickinson defined the essence of poetry, If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. While Tina Barr would, no doubt, eschew my comparison with the venerable Dickinson, her poetry shows insight into the human condition and many factors that contribute to where we are as a people. This collection faces and raises challenging questions. No doubt, Dickinson would approve. My goal in this review is to display Tina Barr’s thematic acuity and poetic skills.
Arrangement & Design
Pink Moon features five headings: I. Beyond the Holler, II. Extinction, III. Contagion, IV. Histories, and V. Births. I allowed the headings to serve as tour guide through the poet’s world. There are thirty-eight poems within a page count of ninety-two. Poems are of varying length with several covering two to three pages. This arrangement allows space for thematic development.
The title poem opens the collection. Barr uses vivid descriptions of conditions in nature described by Algonquin Indians as “April’s Pink Moon.” Colors such as lilac, fuchsia, half-moon of orange and more, permeate Barr’s work. Barr, in the poem, suffers from a virus that “like pink moss, has outcroppings all over my white matter.” That same poem describes a storm over the valley so violent that “I stared over the slope into my fear; the buzz of pinks, oranges; the wrangling wire lurched, like a snake with its head cut, still jerks and curls.” Barr’s juxtapositions are original and provocative.
Tina Barr’s Style
Primarily a free verse poet, Barr’s work is full of arresting metaphors: “Like a snake with its head cut,” which exemplify her visual skill. Da Vinci has said, Poets paint pictures with words. This is an apt description of Tina Barr. I remember vividly, from my youth, a dead snake continuing to writhe long after death.
Continuing in “Beyond the Holler” (Holler, being a place with mountains, forests, and valleys, not screaming at the top of one’s lungs), “Smoke,” lifts me beyond the holler, to experience smoke in exotic places. I found this stanza especially vivid:
In front of the Jokhang Temple, scores of pilgrims
prostrated themselves, dressed in yak skins, turquoise,
carnelian beads braided into their hair. All along the
river, under trees flaming with prayer flags, coracles.
Along the road, fires, meat roasting; that smoke
smelled of yak, but before the temple, juniper
baked into incense sticks swirled, paintbrushes of smell.
Through seven stanzas of varying length, “Smoke” exhibits Barr’s diligence to detail, cadence, and lineage.
Other Significant Themes
Barr’s concern for the environment surfaces in Section II, Extinction. Among the tough questions raised: What can’t be killed? The poet avers: crabgrass, dandelion, and ground ivy. The poet’s convictions about the environment find expression in three powerful pieces: “Extinction,” “SOS,” and “Viral.”
In Section III, Contagions, Barr draws from artworks authored by great painters. These include such luminaries as Édouard Manet, Paul Cezanne, Joyce Thornburg, and others. Barr’s unique approach to describing “infections” ranging from the physical, relational, and spiritual dimensions of life is impressive. These poems touched my emotions and my intellect through their thoughtful perspectives.
Seductive titles captured my attention in Section IV, Histories: “The Joker,” “Mirror, Mirror,” “Crime,” “New Year’s Eve, and El Dorado.” This excerpt from El Dorado displays Barr’s ability to combine her personal history with American history:
[Zebulon] Vance, in Congress, said that for
the slave that is his normal condition.
After our state seceded, he raised
a company, The Rough and Ready
nearly drowned swimming Bryce’s
Creek to get boats for his men; they
made him governor. He sold salt
so people preserved meat, used blockade
runners to send North Carolina cotton
over the sea, kept mills open. He may
have been the KKK’s Grand Dragon.
The “normal” condition for slaves, of course, was as property for the aggrandizement of the privileged. Barr’s personal history, throughout this set, reaches into present day contexts which cry out for rectification.
Barr, throughout Pink Moon, reminded me about the complexities of life, the heartaches, injustices, and anomalies of life. Her poems caused an inner-stirring akin to Emily Dickinson’s definition: If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry.
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