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Hymn
By John Barton
A journey in search of love through the contemporary homoerotic male body.
Improvising on a variety of poetic forms and traversing disparate landscapes — from Belfast to the clear-cuts of Vancouver Island, from the subterranean heat of Jules Verne's Iceland to the ventriloquism ... Read more
Overview
A journey in search of love through the contemporary homoerotic male body.
Improvising on a variety of poetic forms and traversing disparate landscapes — from Belfast to the clear-cuts of Vancouver Island, from the subterranean heat of Jules Verne's Iceland to the ventriloquism of the Alberta Rockies' echoing eastern slopes — John Barton documents the path of the male body in the search for love in an increasingly unstable, supposedly tolerant contemporary world. Hymn, stokes the fires of homoerotic romantic love with its polar extremes of intimacy and solitude.
? though he files all forethought of the unknown life now going
on without him, a life he confuses with his own, his life promiscuous
however rearranged his surfaces or clean his drawers, the unclarifying
distractions of the body portentous in his downfall, the downfall
of his own body a matter of time, but thinking of the man who left
the accidental man come between them, the man he may yet become
it is impossible for him not to sing them unwashed hymns of praise.
from "Hymn"
John Barton
John Barton is the current Poet Laureate of Victoria. His eleven books of poetry and nine chapbooks include For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems, Polari, and Windsock. His critical works include Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay-Male Poets (2007), The Malahat Review at 50, and The Essential Douglas LePan. He lives in Victoria.
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- Dimensions 144 pages, 6.00 x 8.75 x .50 in
- Published August 15, 2009
- Publisher Brick Books
- Category Poetry
- Keywords Canadian , Poetry
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