4/5 stars
What's it about? In his second collection, Roger Reeves interrogates the grief and suffering wrought by humanity. Best Barbarian lays out our ugly, violent, and racist wrongs and marvels at how we continue to reach for each other to survive.
How’d I find it? This was recommended by someone who knows poetry and my taste in poetry. A home run.
Who will enjoy this book? These poems should be appreciated by any poetry reader. Try Kyle Dargan’s work once you finish Best Barbarian.
What stood out? Like Anne Carson, Roger Reeves is a poet-scholar whose work mines history, literature, myth, and memoir as source material. Every poem contains a treasure trove of references deserving of multiple reads. Take “Domestic Violence,” a nod to Dante, Chaucer, and Virgil in which Louis Till is guided in the afterlife by Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lucille Clifton. Yeah, it’s heady.
Which line made me feel something? Almost every line caused a twinge, but I was of course drawn to “The Broken Fields Mended,” which riffs on Whitman: “It is like the future and past of us meeting above and below us, our something in the way / Of disappearing, our something in the snow; though the deer past, though the angel burned, stay with me”