Resurrection Fail

by John Wall Barger

As its title suggests, Resurrection Fail is a worthy paradox, blending John Wall Barger's enviable economy of style with a luxury of spirit that glimmers beneath both his speaker's fetching enthusiasms and deep sorrows. These poems capture how the world's beauty and brutality are bound together; that we fail and—if we're lucky—find the will to resurrect ourselves over and over again. But for all this poet's clear seriousness of purpose, there's a vivid, often witty life force here that reminds me that I'm glad to be alive. I really loved getting to know this book and I bet you will, too. -- Erin Belieu

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2021

About the author

John Wall Barger (1969-) was born in New York City and grew up Nova Scotia, Canada. His poems and critical writing have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review Online, Zyzzyva, The Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and Best of the Best Canadian Poetry. He's the author of six books of poems, including Smog Mother (Palimpsest, 2022). A contract editor for Frontenac House, Barger lives in Vermont and teaches at Dartmouth College.

Reviews

[Jill MacLean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such wonders of unexpected words and juxtapositions of words...of people whose lives I enter and am the larger for having done so...of joy, violence, disappointment and the inability to "know," strive as we may...and of the very personal. I thought it brave of Barger to write so intimately of people who have influenced him deeply during the course of his life.
And, of course, as happens with me and poetry, there are some poems I can't as yet connect with as I would like to - but then why should I, with every poem, be able to access intuitive leaps and elements of the surreal?
All the poems breathe life, Barger's life, so fully lived, and life in more general terms, always closely linked with and encircled by death - and surely, as with all art, the poems owe their existence to that very closeness.
A keeper!

[J Macarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

In RESURRECTION FAIL, John Wall Barger has “made a heaven of corpses.” The question that chews at the heels of these poems: whose funeral is being attended? Therefore, “paranoia is apt.” Wall Barger’s book is an elegy for his life and also for our shared world: Walter Benjamin’s “single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage.” John Wall Barger: “Hour after hour / we carry our dead.” “Grief sticks” to this poet, “every burr of grief / brushed against”; “the melancholy / so sharp” “from all that's clawed and / scratched us since our births.” Among those burrs, scratches: a neighbor with a “sweet look,” who hangs himself; a godfather, “his brain like a brush fire. / Parkinson's.”; the disappearance of a cat; the death of a friend; the end of “twenty years of friendship.” Wall Barger, “our white dude” narrator, speaks “with such / forthrightness about his life,” “sharing details / so personal / you could not hate him.” In the poet’s direct address, such caring and respect for the “beautiful reader.” RESURRECTION FAIL is a fast, no-time-to-waste read; there is no belaboring or beating around the bushes in these poems in which there is the acknowledgement: “Any little thing / can wreck you.” The poems start in a near present time and locale, then move all the way backward in time to the “Irishmen and Norwegians” of the poet’s patrilineal line to a great-great-great- / great-grandfather” and the moment the poet’s father is “eyeing” the poet’s mother “in a striped miniskirt / in English class.” Each poem is an attempted resurrection, and therefore, each poem deals head-on with failure. The failure a life sustains: failures of self, of relationships, and of memory, because resurrection of any sort is impossible. Yet the attempt to bring back, to resurrect, even though “it will hurt” and “horrify” is a means for this poet to inquire: “what is mercy?” “How do they/[I] find peace?” How do I “realize[d] how happy / I can be”? “[B]eautiful reader[s]”: “at a sinkhole of a bar,” take a sip of your “wine coolers” and join the “mingling like lunatics / in a Russian Fable / … tangoing. / Having a great time. / From the ceiling, / … bodies / dangle … keep dancing … / [p]retending not to notice / their bare feet / in [y]our hair.”

[Mike Good · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading John Barger's poems. Somehow direct and lucid and surreal while swerving through personal, political, and historical, and always full of life and surprise.

[Ernest Hilbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Resurrection Fail, John Wall Barger's mature talents are on full display. This masterful collection is very evidently the culmination of years of hard work and thought, mingling memory and flights of fancy, harnessed to an original and inimitable imagination. It is indisputably among the best books of its kind to have appeared in recent years. Every page dazzles. This is a book not to be missed.

[Jonathan Koven · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lovingly-penned ode to the lifelong comforts, sadnesses, and the ineffable spaces of memory. Barger’s poems are charming and readable, his voice honest and enthusiastic, and the turn-of-phrase consistently aims to surprise. For whatever reason though, I haven’t been as excited recently by narrative poems or longer poems. There are more than a few of those here, which I struggled to connect with. Still, I very much enjoyed this introduction to this poet and I look forward to reading more.

[Natania · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb, moving, shattering and uplifting book of poems: everything a book of poems should be, wants to be, and that we (readers) need it to be. It's a book about vulnerability and violence, and about coming back, again and again, for more: because our world, despite being "a heaven of corpses," is beautiful, is to be cherished, and love is worth assaying again and again.

[Lynn Tait · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good interesting read as a whole. I do have difficulty with poetry that poem after poem is in short lines - not sure why, but I start changing line lengths in my head.