For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems

by John Barton

Overview

Drawn from nine collections published over thirty years, the thirty-eight poems in this retrospective reveal the poetic accomplishments of John Barton. In this collection, which is introduced by R.M Vaughan, Barton explores the role of love in contemporary society, the complexity of gay experience, the persistence of homophobia, the reinvention of the idea of family, and the fear and courage that AIDS engendered and how it continues to shape the search and attainment of intimacy.

This selected embraces Barton's passions for art, literature, the city and nature, including his ongoing passion for Emily Carr with four poems drawn from West of Darkness. Other personages make cameo appearances, including Andy Warhol, Frank O'Hara, Joseph Brodsky, M.C. Escher and C. P. Cavafy. Adolf Hitler has a dialogue-free, walk-on part early on.

What Barton accomplishes in For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin is best described by Barry Dempster: "This book reminds us of John Barton's stature as a consummate social poet, a topnotch lyricist, and a risk-taker of sometimes breathtaking scale."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780889712706
Publisher:	Nightwood Editions
Publication date:	09/15/2012
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	8.80(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

John Barton has published nine previous collections of awardwinning poetry, six chapbooks, and two anthologies, including Hidden Structure; West of Darkness: Emily Carr, A Self-Portrait; Sweet Ellipsis; Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay-Male Poets and Hymn. He has won three Archibald Lampman Awards, a Patricia Hackett, an Ottawa Book Award, a CBC Literary Award and a National Magazine Award. Born and raised in Alberta, he worked as a librarian and editor for five national museums in Ottawa, where he also co-edited Arc Poetry Magazine and Vernissage: The Magazine of the National Gallery of Canada. John Barton lives in Victoria, where he edits The Malahat Review. For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin is his tenth book.

Table of Contents

"I No Longer Fear to Be a Man" Or, The John Barton Guide to Better Living R. M. Vaughan 9

from A Poor Photographer

The Pregnant Man 15

A Poor Photographer Improves His Vision 18

Hidden Structure

Hidden Structure 21

from West of Darkness: Emily Carr, a Self-Portrait

Grey 39

St. Josephs Hospital, 1937 41

Forest, British Columbia 42

A Skidegate Pole 44

from Great Men

My Cellophane Suit 46

Goodbye to All That 48

Great Men 50

Au Garage, Montréal 52

Naked Hearts 54

from Notes toward a Family Tree

In the Year of 56

Metropolitan Life 58

from Designs from the Interior

City in the Foothills 60

Delivery 62

Physical 64

Ecology 66

The Man from Grande Prairie 68

Parallel Lanes 70

For the Boy With the Eyes of the Virgin 72

from Sweet Ellipsis

Touch-Screen 75

Saranac Lake Variation 78

Pushing Upstream 82

Confidential 84

The Crisis of Lyricism 88

from Hypothesis

Watershed 91

Hypothesis 94

At Lindow 97

The Living Room 100

Escher 102

Sunrise, Grand Canyon 104

All That Enters Must Pass Through 108

from Hymn

Aide-Mémoire 114

Warhol 118

Pathetic Fallacy 120

In the House of the Present 122

Days of 2004, Days of Cavafy 125

Acknowledgements 133

About the Author 135

Editorial Reviews

In For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems, John Barton deftly etches a poetic and personal history of the homosexual impulse from ancient to contemporary times. In the tour de force opening poem, "The Pregnant Man" (from The Photographer), Barton elliptically and with playful humour suggests the clash between this unstoppable same-sex male erotic impulse and society, hinting at the homosexual male's resistance to society's conforming principle at the same time that society attempts to thwart or disavow the impulse's existence.
—Gillian Harding-Russell, Prairie Fire Review of Books - -

From the Publisher

In For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin: Selected Poems, John Barton deftly etches a poetic and personal history of the homosexual impulse from ancient to contemporary times. In the tour de force opening poem, "The Pregnant Man" (from The Photographer), Barton elliptically and with playful humour suggests the clash between this unstoppable same-sex male erotic impulse and society, hinting at the homosexual male's resistance to society's conforming principle at the same time that society attempts to thwart or disavow the impulse's existence.
--Gillian Harding-Russell, Prairie Fire Review of Books

Praise for For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin