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Chord: Poems
That art should once have been marked
with this 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.
with this 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.
72 pages, Paperback
First published July 14, 2015
11 people are currently reading
161 people want to read
About the author
Rick Barot
10 books22 followersFrom rickbarot.com:
Rick Barot was born in the Philippines, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and attended Wesleyan University and The Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.
He has published three books of poetry with Sarabande Books: The Darker Fall (2002), which received the Kathryn A. Morton Prize; Want (2008), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize; and Chord (2015), which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and received the 2016 UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Artist Trust of Washington, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow and a Jones Lecturer in Poetry. In 2020, Barot received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.
His poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New Yorker, and The Threepenny Review. His work has been included in many anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, Asian-American Poetry: The Next Generation, Language for a New Century, and The Best American Poetry 2012, 2016, and 2020.
Barot lives in Tacoma, Washington and teaches at Pacific Lutheran University. He is also the director of The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at PLU. His fourth book of poems, The Galleons, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2020. The Galleons was listed on the top ten poetry books for 2020 by the New York Public Library, was a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Awards, and was on the longlist for the National Book Award. Also in 2020, his chapbook During the Pandemic was published by Albion Books. In Fall 2024, Milkweed Editions will publish his fifth book of poems, Moving the Bones.
Rick Barot was born in the Philippines, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and attended Wesleyan University and The Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.
He has published three books of poetry with Sarabande Books: The Darker Fall (2002), which received the Kathryn A. Morton Prize; Want (2008), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize; and Chord (2015), which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and received the 2016 UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Artist Trust of Washington, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow and a Jones Lecturer in Poetry. In 2020, Barot received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.
His poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New Yorker, and The Threepenny Review. His work has been included in many anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, Asian-American Poetry: The Next Generation, Language for a New Century, and The Best American Poetry 2012, 2016, and 2020.
Barot lives in Tacoma, Washington and teaches at Pacific Lutheran University. He is also the director of The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at PLU. His fourth book of poems, The Galleons, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2020. The Galleons was listed on the top ten poetry books for 2020 by the New York Public Library, was a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Awards, and was on the longlist for the National Book Award. Also in 2020, his chapbook During the Pandemic was published by Albion Books. In Fall 2024, Milkweed Editions will publish his fifth book of poems, Moving the Bones.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
December 6, 2018
what's visible isn't always superior
to what can't be seen, like ideas proven only
by poor means, as though the invisible
were a ventroloquist saying something important
with his mouth shut.
- From "Black Canvas"
Art, family, diaphonous memories ~ really enjoyed this collection by Barot, and I will seek out his other work.
Highlights of the collection:
Looking at the Romans
Black Canvas
The Documents of Spring
Brown Refrigerator
The Man with the Crew-Cut
to what can't be seen, like ideas proven only
by poor means, as though the invisible
were a ventroloquist saying something important
with his mouth shut.
- From "Black Canvas"
Art, family, diaphonous memories ~ really enjoyed this collection by Barot, and I will seek out his other work.
Highlights of the collection:
Looking at the Romans
Black Canvas
The Documents of Spring
Brown Refrigerator
The Man with the Crew-Cut
September 16, 2015
I rarely read books of poetry anymore. Usually for me, a poem is a singular treat among days of prose. But I sat down tonight and devoured Rick Barot's CHORD in its entirety. And I am so glad that my appetite was willing. I much enjoyed this beautiful portraiture of people and things that are now familiar to me, especially the second section.
January 22, 2016
Quiet, whispers of poems. Meaningful. Certainly not effortless, but indeed, elegant.
April 9, 2020
". . . And the creeks curving
into sudden sight like a heartache. The mind going
over and over things, not knowing what to do
with the world, but to turn it into something else."
[conclusion of "Coast Starlight"]
This is a gorgeous collection. I've been reading it slowly for the past two months, first straight through then revisiting randomly. Dwelling there. I so admire his eye and ear, the way he braids the personal, the natural, the political--his quiet but insistent gaze so tender yet unrelenting.
into sudden sight like a heartache. The mind going
over and over things, not knowing what to do
with the world, but to turn it into something else."
[conclusion of "Coast Starlight"]
This is a gorgeous collection. I've been reading it slowly for the past two months, first straight through then revisiting randomly. Dwelling there. I so admire his eye and ear, the way he braids the personal, the natural, the political--his quiet but insistent gaze so tender yet unrelenting.
September 27, 2021
Assigned to read for a class, I had not heard of Rick Barot.
Very welcome assignment!
The collection starts out strong with two poems: Tarp, and On Gardens.
One of the things I most appreciated is how Barot drops political and social comments into the middle of a poem and then moves on.
Very welcome assignment!
The collection starts out strong with two poems: Tarp, and On Gardens.
One of the things I most appreciated is how Barot drops political and social comments into the middle of a poem and then moves on.
December 27, 2021
"Tarp"
"Looking at the Romans"
"Exegesis in Wartime"
"Triptych"
Yep.
"Looking at the Romans"
"Exegesis in Wartime"
"Triptych"
Yep.
September 12, 2023
when it's good, it's really good!
August 22, 2020
This is part of my 2020 Pandemic Project: using poets' repetitions to make something i'm calling repoesy, ie, all words/phrases are taken from Rick Barot's collection Chord.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
if you want to make your own ...
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
prose|
azaleas and so on| {x2}
a poem|
it was not dark|
rain|
the back|
the body|
a woman|
city by| {or, by city| }
talking about|
calling and| {or, and calling| }
the beginning|
rain|
Talking About A Poem
the back city by
(azaleas
and so on)
rain
the beginning
it was not dark
and calling a woman
rain
(azaleas
and so on)
the body
prose
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
if you want to make your own ...
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
prose|
azaleas and so on| {x2}
a poem|
it was not dark|
rain|
the back|
the body|
a woman|
city by| {or, by city| }
talking about|
calling and| {or, and calling| }
the beginning|
rain|
July 4, 2021
LOOKING AT THE ROMANS
in the museum, the heavy marble busts
on their white plinths, I recognize one likeness
as my uncle, the retired accountant
whose mind, like a conquered country, is turning
into desert, into the dust of forgotten things.
The white head of an old man, big as a god,
its short curled hair still rich
as matted grass, is my grandmother,
a Roman on her deathbed, surrounded
by a citizenry of keening, her breaths rising out
of the dark of a well, the orange medicine bottles
massed like an emergency on the table.
The delicate face of the serious young man
is another uncle, the one who lost
his friends when a plane hit their aircraft carrier,
the one who dropped pomegranate fires
on the scattering villagers, on the small
brown people who looked like him.
One bust is of a noblewoman, the pleats
of her toga articulated into silky marble folds,
her hair carved into singular strands:
she is the aunt who sends all her money home,
to lazy sons and dying neighbors.
Another marble woman is my other aunt,
the one who grows guavas and persimmons,
the one who dries salted fish on her garage roof,
as though she were still mourning
the provinces. Here is the cousin who is a priest.
Here is the cousin who sells drugs.
Here is the other grandmother, her heart still
skilled at keeping time. Here is my mother
in the clear pale face of a Roman’s wife,
a figure moving softly, among flowers and slaves.
in the museum, the heavy marble busts
on their white plinths, I recognize one likeness
as my uncle, the retired accountant
whose mind, like a conquered country, is turning
into desert, into the dust of forgotten things.
The white head of an old man, big as a god,
its short curled hair still rich
as matted grass, is my grandmother,
a Roman on her deathbed, surrounded
by a citizenry of keening, her breaths rising out
of the dark of a well, the orange medicine bottles
massed like an emergency on the table.
The delicate face of the serious young man
is another uncle, the one who lost
his friends when a plane hit their aircraft carrier,
the one who dropped pomegranate fires
on the scattering villagers, on the small
brown people who looked like him.
One bust is of a noblewoman, the pleats
of her toga articulated into silky marble folds,
her hair carved into singular strands:
she is the aunt who sends all her money home,
to lazy sons and dying neighbors.
Another marble woman is my other aunt,
the one who grows guavas and persimmons,
the one who dries salted fish on her garage roof,
as though she were still mourning
the provinces. Here is the cousin who is a priest.
Here is the cousin who sells drugs.
Here is the other grandmother, her heart still
skilled at keeping time. Here is my mother
in the clear pale face of a Roman’s wife,
a figure moving softly, among flowers and slaves.
September 14, 2024
The three notes in this chord seem to be the natural world, the art we make of it, and personal narrative.
While I love poetry, I never thought a book of poetry could be a page-turner. Yet, CHORD is just such a collection. Each title and first line grabs you like a current and before you know it, you've covered the expansive visual and spiritual landscapes of the work. While its concerns are manifold, CHORD's poems wrestle with the difference between perception and the world being perceived; the organ of the eye and what the mind does with what it takes in, via poetry, memory, and grief--our own dark blot imposed upon the often indifferent outside world. The three notes in this chord seem to be the natural world, the art we make of it, and personal narrative. Each poem's cerebral qualities are incarnated (and made exigent) by the poet's biography and his powers of perception and language.
While I love poetry, I never thought a book of poetry could be a page-turner. Yet, CHORD is just such a collection. Each title and first line grabs you like a current and before you know it, you've covered the expansive visual and spiritual landscapes of the work. While its concerns are manifold, CHORD's poems wrestle with the difference between perception and the world being perceived; the organ of the eye and what the mind does with what it takes in, via poetry, memory, and grief--our own dark blot imposed upon the often indifferent outside world. The three notes in this chord seem to be the natural world, the art we make of it, and personal narrative. Each poem's cerebral qualities are incarnated (and made exigent) by the poet's biography and his powers of perception and language.
September 23, 2025
I take Chord as a manual of sorts. Rick Barot talks quite a bit about the craft, and prescribes here and there. The one in Coast Starlight is crystal:
I also like the one in The Wooden Overcoat, where he illustrates the difference between detail and image:
Being gay, immigrant, and Filipino, this book outlines a lot of things I can trace. It's mine.
That you have to keep distressing the canvas
of the personal. That you need to ask what is
left out for beauty's sake, to see how the unspoken
will inflect the things you have allowed yourself to say.
I also like the one in The Wooden Overcoat, where he illustrates the difference between detail and image:
[T]he difference doesn't matter, except in poetry,
where a coffin is just another coffin until someone
at a funel calls it a wooden overcoat, an image
so heavy and warm at the same time that you forget
it's about death.
Being gay, immigrant, and Filipino, this book outlines a lot of things I can trace. It's mine.
August 27, 2025
A collection of poems about poems, writing poetry, social justice, and hope.
from On Gardens: "I know it's not fair / to see qualities of injustice in the aesthetics / of a garden, but somewhere between / what the eye sees and what the mind thinks / is the world, landscape mangled // into sentences, one color read into rage."
from The Documents of Spring: "I was told once that having so many birds / in my poetry meant that it was / all sentimental, that birds weren't / the real world, but a way of always dodging / the important questions."
from The Man With the Crew-Cut: "This is February. The day is as good as / dead, tombed over by a month-long stretch / of overcast sky. I like reading almost as much // as I like eating. I like both better than / I like people."
from On Gardens: "I know it's not fair / to see qualities of injustice in the aesthetics / of a garden, but somewhere between / what the eye sees and what the mind thinks / is the world, landscape mangled // into sentences, one color read into rage."
from The Documents of Spring: "I was told once that having so many birds / in my poetry meant that it was / all sentimental, that birds weren't / the real world, but a way of always dodging / the important questions."
from The Man With the Crew-Cut: "This is February. The day is as good as / dead, tombed over by a month-long stretch / of overcast sky. I like reading almost as much // as I like eating. I like both better than / I like people."
December 31, 2018
I found Barot's poems personable, sincere and intelligent. My favorite was "A Lecture on the Nature of Metaphor," because the serpentine meanderings seemed like a run-on sentence (actually, a run-on rhetorical question) only to land squarely at home. Metaphorically speaking.
He also has a triptych of poems that appeal to me since that is a form that I have used and admire. I want to play with opening up the structure of the poems I write--something else I saw that Barot does that inspires me.
He also has a triptych of poems that appeal to me since that is a form that I have used and admire. I want to play with opening up the structure of the poems I write--something else I saw that Barot does that inspires me.
September 11, 2022
Rick Barot is a Pacific Northwest poet whose work I have enjoyed before, and if much of his verse doesn't really connect with me, there are always notable exceptions in each of his collections.
Three poems from Chord stand out for me, all of which share a critical observational quality that emanates from a place of peaceful reflection, but each of which is delivered with an intensity of engagement that achieves the poetic ideal. Those poems are:
"Tarp"
"On Gardens"
"Question Arising While Listening to a Lecture on the Nature of Metaphor"
Three poems from Chord stand out for me, all of which share a critical observational quality that emanates from a place of peaceful reflection, but each of which is delivered with an intensity of engagement that achieves the poetic ideal. Those poems are:
"Tarp"
"On Gardens"
"Question Arising While Listening to a Lecture on the Nature of Metaphor"
April 15, 2018
I enjoyed this book more than I expected. Although I usually gravitate toward the modern, conversational qualities of spoken word poets, such as Rudy Francisco and Guante, I appreciated Barot’s softer, more subtle take on contemporary poetry. Two of my favorites were The Man with the Crew-Cut and Triptych (mostly the second section).
September 6, 2018
I feel like anything I say about this book wouldn’t do it justice. I had the good fortune to take a poetry workshop with Rick Barot at a conference and his poetry is a teacher, which probably explains why he is such a wonderful teacher. Anyway, I recommend this collection and it is one I will come back to again and again.
January 10, 2021
Very nice read. Rick Barot touched on an open nerve in my life's history. He taught me to open up and speak for the unspoken detail in my own poetry. What is it that is left unsaid that needs to be documented.
October 30, 2018
Stunning, devastating poems from a poet who knows the political and the personal are woven together.
August 24, 2019
Beautiful collection of poetry filled with vivid imagery imbued with meaning! I enjoyed every single page, and I highly recommend everyone read this wonderful book!
April 14, 2023
I read this very very slowly but fell in love with it from the first poem onwards (“Tarp”). Lots of lines that sing, images that startle and lots of poems of loss and longing.
Read
May 5, 2025Rick Barot is such a thoughtful presence in American poetry. He can write a poem (and does) about the difference between a detail and an image….and make it a heart-stopper.
August 20, 2020
This collection is a craft class. Lessons in the how to of poetry, yes, and also the why, the what, the whom.
February 6, 2016
Very accomplished poetry with excellent images.
Family, memory, art and the poetry form play significant roles. One poem that deals with Whitman? has LGBT content.
Family, memory, art and the poetry form play significant roles. One poem that deals with Whitman? has LGBT content.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews