{"id":39,"date":"2013-01-13T22:09:54","date_gmt":"2013-01-13T22:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/?p=39"},"modified":"2013-01-13T22:09:59","modified_gmt":"2013-01-13T22:09:59","slug":"water-breathing-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/?p=39","title":{"rendered":"Water Breathing Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Timberline Press, 51 pages, 1999
\nOut of print.<\/p>\n

[reveal heading=”%image% Selection”]<\/p>\n

MAP TO THE PARTY<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

IF you wait, you grow old, nothing
\nmore. Traveling light is your only
\nilluminating illusion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Either way you can’t remain
\ntime and place inseparable.
\nTo settle is to amass names:<\/span><\/p>\n

lespedeza, hickory, Providence Road.
\nTo accelerate is to compress
\nlatitude and longitude,<\/span><\/p>\n

to shoulder wind in every
\ndirection, to wear a hole
\nin the already worn cartography.<\/span><\/p>\n

To grow old is to grasp sheer
\ngranite faces, to negotiate
\ndeclivities and eruptions<\/span><\/p>\n

of aspiration, to disbelieve
\ncoded legends, to find instead
\nwater’s divides, to follow the rule<\/span><\/p>\n

of thumb-civilization’s always
\ndown stream a steaming ruin,
\na crumbling repository, a flow,<\/span><\/p>\n

a seepage, the final flush
\nto sea level and lower. Buried in
\nthe alluvium: Etruscan bronzes,<\/span><\/p>\n

eroding pyramids coral-encrusted
\nhub caps, cracked glass fishing
\nfloats. On an oil-blackened spit<\/span><\/p>\n

the aging Archimedian rabble
\ngathers to count the grains
\nagain, praying for a mistake.<\/span><\/p>\n

[\/reveal]<\/p>\n

[reveal heading=”%image% Reviews”]<\/p>\n

Water Breathing Air is the fifth collection of poetry by Bargen, whose poem “The Good Red Rose” won the 1995 St. Louis Poetry Center open competition.\u00a0 The poems in his latest offering often begin with a joyful moment that is that is quickly juxtaposed with a jolt of reality, such as an accident , an argument or one of his recurring images, a flood.\u00a0 The canvas of his writing is scarred with the effects of modern industry and the betrayal of nature by man, and images of nature’s resistance run like a current through this collection.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Sorting Snapshots”\u00a0 is a more contemporary poem in which the narrator is overwhelmed by memories that remain unexplained.\u00a0 Memories, like water swell and overflow, and they can dilute the very meaning of what they represent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The poem reaches an epiphany by revealing the narrators underlying desire to preserve memories.\u00a0 Camped on the floor, surrounded by photographs, the narrator is determined to put them in an album.\u00a0 But the narrator is invaded by the very memories and can’t go through with the cutting and trimming:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“What’s cut away<\/span><\/p>\n

is the peripheral and its edges, thin<\/span><\/p>\n

strips of the unnecessary, the clutter that obscures the borders and blinds<\/span><\/p>\n

the focus.”<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The narrator feels guilty discarding unworthy moments and falters.\u00a0 Finishing the job would mean sacrificing the insignificant, and looking back, the narrator realizes it was at those moments that the mind was free and unburdened.\u00a0 In the future, as Bargen artfully depicts, we’ll be no more remembered than the background faces in a photograph.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“And then there’s<\/span><\/p>\n

the overexposed, the double exposed,<\/span><\/p>\n

and the underexposed; it’s all the avoidable<\/span><\/p>\n

accidents and the way we edit our lives;<\/span><\/p>\n

what we must forget, the litter of vision that<\/span><\/p>\n

swells and turns all our faces to backgrounds.”<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bargen’s poems speak in the language of water but his reflections don’t dampen the human spirit. Rather, his images -floating on the waves of hope and possibility-can inspire and rejuvenate.<\/span><\/p>\n

[\/reveal]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Timberline Press, 51 pages, 1999 Out of print. [reveal heading=”%image% Selection”] MAP TO THE PARTY IF you wait, you grow old, nothing more. Traveling light is your only illuminating illusion. Either way you can’t remain time and place inseparable. To Continue reading Water Breathing Air<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42,"href":"https:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/42"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}