Human Hours
Graywolf Press, 2018
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. 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 time–or at least measure it–with quiet bravura.
PRAISE
"Even in our darkest hours, Catherine Barnett’s poems insist, company and comedy are never far away."
—Maggie Millner, Bomb
“[…brim[s] with emotional intelligence.”
—The New York Times Style Magazine
“Catherine Barnett’s poems are scrupulously restrained and beautifully made. Her first two books—Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced and The Game of Boxes—are taut, heartsick, and grief-stricken. Her third book, Human Hours, widens her scope. The mourner lets loose what she calls her “inner clown” and releases her gift for droll analysis and life-sustaining pleasures. She is a spiritual searcher. Her poems are deeply humane, dark, and exuberant.”
– The American Academy of Arts and Letters
EXCERPT
from O Esperanza!
Look at these books: hope.
Look at this face: hope.
When I was young I studied with Richard Rorty, that was lucky,
I stared out the window and couldn't understand a word he said,
he drew a long flat line after the C he gave me,
the class was called Metaphysics and Epistemology,
that's eleven syllables, that’s
hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope hope.
About the Author
Catherine Barnett is the author of four poetry collections: Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space, Human Hours (winner of the Believer Book Award), The Game of Boxes (winner of the James Laughlin Award), and Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced. A Guggenheim fellow and recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and letters, she teaches at NYU and works as an independent editor. Read more >