Controvertibles

by Quan Barry

Controvertibles features more of the refined brilliance and delicate lyricism of this poet, cast in a more meditative mode. Throughout, she examines cultural objects by lifting them out of their usual settings and repositioning them in front of new, disparate backdrops. Doug Flutie's famous Hail Mary pass and Rutger Hauer's role in Blade Runner are contextualized within the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Bob Beamon's world-record-setting long jump in the 1968 Olympics is slowed down and examined in the style of The Matrix 's revolutionary bullet time.

Samantha Smith, Richard Nixon, the Shroud of Turin, Igor Stravinsky, the largo from Handel's Xerxes , the resurrection of Lazarus, and the groundbreaking 1984 Apple Computer Super Bowl commercial are among the many disparate people and objects Barry uses to explore the multifaceted nature of existence.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Born in Saigon and raised on Boston’s north shore, Quan Barry is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the author of four poetry books; her third book, Water Puppets, won the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and was a PEN/Open Book finalist. She has received NEA Fellowships in both fiction and poetry, and her work has appeared in such publications as Ms. and The New Yorker. Barry lives in Wisconsin.

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure if it's complementary aesthetics, similar cultural experiences, or just appropriate targeting but I find this Quan Barry volume compelling and--despite the concerted work of understanding she tasks the reader to--intensely readable.

In this work of superb and delicate lyric, Barry finds the balance between the holy and profane, the obvious and oft-overlooked bridge between common experience and transcendent belief. Everything from her endings to her titles are extra-worldly. They accrue intense meaning through their juxtaposition of the material and the immaterial, the metonymous translation and embodiment of the world we know into the world we create through thought.

This is excellently written, brilliantly conceived contemporary lyric poetry.

[stephanie roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Questa è una raccolta eccitante di poesie. Versi acuti che sono audaci, letterari, interrogativi e tutti intrecciati con l'umiltà.

Ho intenzione di acquistare un'altra copia; Voglio scrivere su ogni pagina. Comprerò una copia in più, di questo, e leggerò tutto il resto che questo autore elettrizzante ha scritto.

"To believe is to suffer.

It is like loving someone in the dark
who never answers.

It means nothing to me now.

[]

I will remember our words & will bear this memory
between my hands

as carefully as a bowl of fresh milk."

from "the knight's soliloquy as vespers"

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

(4.5/5)

the guitar's sorrow / swelling like a sprain (3)

the heart's four rooms (5)

two men hanging like pinatas above a crowd (7)

the long notes like eggs on the page (10)

I wore white, the cloth plentiful as walls (13)

her feet like two small holes (17)

Tonight I am thinking of the young woman who dreams of her father being shot in the head. Imagine needing to believe the one you love has been destroyed. (24)

it hones its trumpet of bone (26)

what did it feel like / when she first held the small loaf of his body / in her arms? (30)

Even now I imagine the girls both pale & dark / like a flock of moons reflected in the water (31)

the full moon like a mandate (34)

the body's three doors (36)

chaos is a hooked tongue-- / contagious, interior (37)

the road lucid again (50)

the Miami night larval (53)

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

really enjoyed the intertextuality of this poetry collection, even though it made it more difficult to actually read the poems as poems. i want to go back and read the poems again without google in front of me.

[Mike Ponti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes, when a poet writes about Rage Against the Machine without any irony or humor, I say, "Thanks, Quan Barry, for being observant of things outside that university library where the other poets seem to cloister themselves."

[R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phew.