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Catherine Barnett's tragicomic third collection, Human Hours, shuttles between a Whitmanian embrace of others and a kind of rapacious solitude. Barnett speaks from the middle of hope and confusion, carrying philosophy into the everyday. Watching a son become a young man, a father become a restless beloved shell, and a country betray its democratic ideals, the speakers try to make sense of such departures. Four lyric essays investigate the essential urge and appeal of questions that are "accursed," that are limited and unanswered by answers. What are we to do with the endangered human hours that remain to us? Across the leaps and swerves of this collection, the fevered mind tries to slow or at least measure time with quiet bravura, by counting a lover's breaths, by remembering a father's space-age watch, by envisioning the apocalyptic future while bedding down on a hard, cold floor, head resting on a dictionary. Human Hours pulses with the absurd, with humor that accompanies the precariousness of the human condition.
The amenities -- En route -- An apprehension -- The light from across the fields -- The skin of the face is that which stays most naked, most destitute -- Forensics -- Epistemology -- Still life -- Landscape with borrowed contours -- Lyric and narrative time at Café Loup -- Accursed Questions, i -- Appeal to numbers -- Comic morning -- Idée fixe -- Essay on An essay concerning human understanding -- Son in August -- Lore -- The necessary preoccupations -- The art of the security question -- O Esperanza! -- Accursed questions, ii -- The humanities -- Calamity Jane on Etsy after the 2016 election -- Another Divine comedy -- Let facts be submitted to a candid wind -- Metaphor on the Crosstown -- Summons -- The sky flashes -- Origin story -- Central Park -- Accursed questions, iii -- Pain scale -- In the studio at end of day -- 433 Eros -- Uncertainty principle at the Atrium Bar -- Uncertainty principle at dawn -- Beckett on the Jumbotron -- Prayer for the lost among us -- The material world -- Eternal recurrance -- Accursed questions, iv -- Amor fati.
Poetry browsing collection : gift of Eleanor Weinbaum family.