GAS Featured Artist: Ho Baron, by Sylvia Van Nooten

Ho Baron’s work and life are a testimony to the importance of travelling, both in the mental and physical sense.  His adventures and explorations--pushing him far from the boundaries of other’s expectations-- are reflected in his art.  The sculptures featured in this written interview are marvelous ventures into an unknown future.  Will we need new religions and new gods?  I suspect that yes, we will and Baron’s work shows us one vision of how this might look. (If you want to explore further but can’t visit his sculpture garden, I suggest buying his book, Gods for Future Religions.)

~Sylvia Van Nooten 

Ho in his own words:

I was born in Chicago, El Paso bred, and was raised in the desert on the Mexican border. After studying English in graduate school in Tucson, I taught in the Peace Corps in Nigeria and Ethiopia. It followed years of moving around. From Africa, I lived in New York, Philadelphia, Austin, the Virgin Islands, Belgium and elsewhere, then I returned to El Paso in 1980 to work for ten years in the family pawn shop. I earned a second master's degree in library science along the way, and after a stint in retail, I worked part time several years as an El Paso’s community college librarian.

 I traveled most continents, taught, did public relations, social work, construction, restaurants and labor. I grew in my personal expression from writing into the visual arts including photography, pen and ink drawing, painting to eventually create about 200 narrative bronze and cast stone figures. In addition, I published a satirical newspaper, "The El Paso Lampoon," had photo exhibits, and I produced a weekly "new music" radio program on the local NPR station.

My life-long art endeavors mostly fall in five areas: writings, the drawings, photography, the years of modeling and casting sculptures, then in creating doll assemblages in my ‘old years.’ Interestingly, the message in my artistic imagery translated similarly in my works and style, from my drawings to my super imposed photography, the sculpture and the assemblages.

I found fulfillment in the visual arts, and sculpture was particularly gratifying. I took a few art courses, but I’m self-taught, my expression is primarily intuitive and my modeling technique is rough. Sculpture has been my greatest passion, abstracting the human form with my motifs of surreal imagery and faces within faces.

With little formal training in the visual arts, my expression is free from rules and expectations. I label my imagery as surreal, because my figures are unreal and fantasy like. Maybe influenced by my travels, some say they are Asian in appearance, some say perhaps Mayan. My sculptures are water-like creatures, perhaps deities of an ancient culture pulled from a remote lagoon. Perhaps they’re ‘gods for future religions.’

My unrefined modeling style might pair me with outsider or folk artists. Casting in bronze, however, is not an outsider’s medium. ‘Original’ might be a better label, but that’s not academic sounding. Call me ‘visionary.’ The American Visionary Art Museum, where I have two works, makes a distinction between folk and visionary art. Visionary art, the museum wrote, is created by self-taught artists whose work is personal rather than folk art, which is developed from an existing cultural tradition.

As for art as a communication tool, different medium relates to different people differently or maybe not at all … lots of variables. I’ve made art mostly for myself, art for art’s sake, so my audience must inevitably be select, mostly other artists, a few fans and tourists looking for entertainment in El Paso. I’ve always known my unusual works would draw a limited audience.

It’s tough reaching an audience as an artist. My creative writings died in my files although I’ve found the visual arts easier to show. I’m old with massive work I’ve created. The future of my work is uncertain but so is the future with all. 

In terms of the artist community, many artists by their very nature are kindred spirits. Even though they can be critical of each other, we share a similar passion. I’ve met hundreds of other artists in weekend art fairs and at gallery openings and of course FB has assisted in drawing together those with similar interests. 

My gallery in my basement is closed, the Covid, but I welcome people to my garden. When asked why I make art, I say it’s my motto: “Make art.” Making art is fun, always gratifying and it’s my religion. Making a living in art is tough, however, but it’s worth pursuing a lifetime, I say to visitors. Art can be in many forms: the visual arts, the performing, graphic, decorative, cooking, gardening and so on. 

“First Person” 1980 is on the book cover of my “Gods for Future Religions.” This was my first sculpture modeled for a night course at the Philadelphia College of Art, my only work modeled from a drawing of mine. All following modeled works were improvised.

Surreal Sculpture Garden is my ‘open to the public’ garden behind my home. Read some commentary from visitors. 

 “Dysfunctional Family Tree” 2012 is a giant assemblage completed after the book was published. Visible as in the sculpture garden image, the tree was a beloved, a live nonbearing mulberry tree, wherein I added features when it died. The hands are plaster, the faces cast stone while the legs are actual mannequin legs.

 “The Water God” The date made was not documented, and the vines and decoration on the work is ever changing. There’s a video on it on You Tube and a further explanation of the work in my “Gods…,” monograph pp. 4-5.

“A Novel Romance” 2005 pp 38-41 Notes are on pp.40-41 and a photo on back cover. The sculpture is installed in public in front of the El Paso Public Library.

“One” 1994 Female on one side and male on the reverse side. On is p.12 there is related commentary. on the page.

“Horses and Riders” 1994 is on p. 29, probably the most outrageous depiction of the subject anywhere, both image and explanation.

“Post Nuclear Dog” 2007 pp. 50-51. The work is among my most popular and a copy is in the American Visionary Art Museum collection.  

http://www.hobaron.com/

https://www.facebook.com/HoBaronSculpture/
https://www.instagram.com/hobarone/ 

George Saunders' LINCOLN IN THE BARDO, reviewed by Henry Stanton

There are many ugly and beautiful things in Lincoln In the Bardo.  The beauty is unequivocally breathtaking.  The following clip sings (as do many segments) and is more poetry than prose (come to think of it, what IS the difference):

"Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-tilted streetlight; a frozen clock, bird-visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; toweling off one’s clinging shirt post–June rain. Pearls, rags, buttons, rug-tuft, beer-froth. Someone’s kind wishes for you; someone remembering to write; someone noticing that you are not at all at ease.”

The structure of the book, short bursts of captivating prose, though not an original form, is artfully contrived.  Characterization is complex and curious and revelatory.  The book is absurd and hysterically funny.  George Saunders is a virtuoso writer.  I love his work.

But the ugly in the book is difficult to consume, is intentionally perverse of course, but is as tough to sustain in review as a Bosch painting.  After a while, it’s just too gross to look through.  (Though maybe I am deceiving myself – I read through the book in one glorious rush).  Perhaps, it’s just too gross to consider the detail in retrospect.  Such revulsion must be typical of confronting hell, and I guess also of The Bardo, though what can we really know of these obscure and anachronistic locations.    People are stuck and the objects that reveal their paralysis are distended and bloated to the point of the grotesque.   Please, I have no interest in seeing your preternaturally engorged penis that is more a growth or a goiter than the alluring staff of life.   Keep it in your pants!  And, that god-awful judgement scene.  Is this Saunders putting on his red conical cap and lighting the reading sinners among us aflame?   Is George indulging in his own prurient auto-da-fe?   Maybe not, maybe its just part of The Reverend Early Thomas’ own Bardo-Kinesis, but I, for one, am really tired of these relentless, tiresome, merciless judgement scenes – exhausted by them.  I have read The Inferno and Portrait of the Artist about 10 times each.  I don’t need to terrify the little boy in me anymore.

I suppose I am being too literal - The Bardo is more of a metaphorical treatment of our own shortcomings and misgivings here on earth.  Really?  Can’t it be about what happens next?  Don’t we all crave some clarity.  Shouldn’t we be allowed a clear glimpse of heaven.  Or maybe just the in-between and the promise it dangles in front of us.  

I confess.  I really want to go to heaven.  And, I want it to be personal.  I want all the good people and pets that I have lived with (and through) to appear in my sacred space with me.  I want to look on the faces of vast mountain ranges; to walk through the pampas in the body of a beautiful girl brushing the heads of grasses with my palms; I want to run away with gazelles and after with cheetah; I want to read poems; to sing; to play an instrument fluently.  Need I go on.  

Don’t get me wrong.  I loved and still love this book.  I have a fluid, intimate rating system that places and replaces reads in my top 10.  It is kind of a Bardo of its own.   Ulysses has stayed there for about 40 years; The Road is in there; and so now is Lincoln In the Bardo.  LIB is about #3 or so.  But, I do abhor the Saunder’s vision of The Bardo.  The notion of planting myself there makes me shiver and convulse.  In contrast, as a counterpoint, I am overwhelmed by the gorgeousness, the purity, the outright truth of the book’s masterful culmination – which is a possession, of Lincoln, and suggests that perhaps interventions of the cathartic and redeeming kind can occur and can guide us or coerce us closer to heaven.  Heaven here on earth.  Heaven on the far side of Bardo.  Whichever.  If Lincoln In the Bardo perpetuates that motion.  Then I am all in.

Author Bio:  George Saunders is the author of eight books, including the story collections Pastoralia and Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2006 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2013 he was awarded the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and was included in Time’s list of the one hundred most influential people in the world. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.

TAKE A DEEP BREATH by Igor Goldkind, reviewed by Belinda Subraman

TAKE A DEEP BREATH, Living With Uncertainty, is an illustrated collection of essays, poetry, and short stories confronting the pandemic in personal terms. It will provoke, entertain and stimulate your thinking into deeper realms. There is philosophy, questioning, comfort in shared experiences and a little sex too.

I will offer up a few lines few lines from various pieces in the book to give you a taste of his writing and perspective, hoping you will seek out more. You may watch a video and hear the author read and hopefully you may order the book. 

In “San Diego Beat Poets”  he writes

“We can play our songs on air violins and/
Summon the rain to drown our sorrows in a sea of greater uncertainty.” 

In “Death is in Life’s Garden” He says

“She holds his weight against her body,/
Until Death sighs and buries his head between her thighs/
So that she is certain he will return to his labours on the morrow.” 

From “Being is Becoming Still” 

“I am fearful of fully failing myself, and yet/
I love myself best when I am alone with eternity.” 

From “What Happens After You Die” 

“Our mind no longer fathoms./
So we have to leave our mind behind —/ 

To finish this sentence and fly.” 

In “He Said What She Said,” after a younger woman insists on phone sex with him but rejects meeting him in person the next day because of his age he writes:

“Later that morning, I dyed my hair black/ 

and left dark stains in the porcelain sink.” 

From “TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF SELF” 

“We are like Nietzsche’s tightrope walker, balanced between the polarity of our historic, known self and our potential, unknown self, poised in balance our entire lives above the unknown. Zarathustra’s observation of the tightrope walker includes the will to surrender one’s own will to gravity, to calibrate two independent directional forces into one balance? “

Igor Goldkind

Interview:

Be: What is your ultimate aim in Take a Deep Breath? Is it to just “go with the flow” or maybe just use what you’ve got where you are and live in the moment? 

Igor: No. The ultimate aim of Take a Deep Breath is learning how to live with uncertainty. For some time now we have had a crisis in authority, a distrust and dissonance of truth. This is because much of the world we have been sold on as the “Real World”, isn’t. But each of us has the innate ability to recognize the difference between the so called ‘RealWorld’ and the actual world we live in. 

It takes discipline and practice to focus on the actual world by not being distracted by the ‘real world’ . 

Be: How do you feel the art relates since is is mostly abstract? Is it meant to connect somehow to the unspoken or unknowable? Did you have the artist to illustrate totally from his inspiration from your words? 

Igor:  The best way to think of art is like stained glass windows in a cathedral. The source of the light the truth of our experience, can often only be conveyed indirectly, through allegory or narrative, music or image; much as if you stare at the sun all you can see is blinding white light. But through the contrived colors of the stained glass window, the artist is able to prism the light into discernible and relatable components, so as better to apprehend the truth of experience. And yes, the illustrator Rian Hughes, read the book and interpreted the narrative content visually, to offer another stained glass for the account to pass through. 

Be: Was this writing therapy for you in addition to the Zen quality of the process of creation? 

Igor:  I think any act of creation is therapeutic. To compose a song or a poem or paint a painting, choreograph a dance, is all a deep reflection of our complicity and collaboration in the cre- ation of the experience of the world that we are having. Our imaginations both collectively and singularly, are in-the-world. It’s important to be self aware of our participation in our own experience. We are not spectators for or of, our lives; we are the ones who create our own lives. It is useful to be conscious of and remain aware of that constant process. 

Be: Is this a creative text to encourage people to use writing as therapy, an inspiration for the individual to explore their deeper realms or is it simply a sharing from your “deeper realms or both? 

Igor:  I think my book is intended to encourage people to better understand themselves in their relation to the world, others and their unconscious selves. So much of the outcomes of our reality is dependent on unconscious forces within us that play on the world almost as if we were more than one person. Writing helps us integrate those various selves into an integrity we can recognize and identify as our self. I use my own experiences as an example as a demonstration of what I prescribe. 

Be: Do you or have you worked in the field of psychology? 

Igor:  I studied both psychology and philosophy at university and had the privilege of studying with the French post Structuralist Michel Foucault at La Sorbonne in Paris. Much of my thinking is Lacanian but I fall back more on practical philosophy, than psychology. I find that psychology is too often focussed on treating symptoms rather than exploring causes. 

Be: Ultimately how would you like people to react to your book or what would you like people to take away from what you have offered? 

Igor:  I hope it helps people. I hope it serves like a tap on the shoulder and a ‘hey, look over there at that’, which is so often what we really need when we’re fixated on anxiety or depression. I also want people to think carefully about suicide. Not dismiss it or be scared of it, but to realize that most people at one time or another have thoughts of suicide and it is important to know how to process those thoughts rather than suppress them. 

As I say in Take a Deep Breath, if you can’t get around something or over something, you have to go through it to get past. 

Or as the second chicken replied to the first chicken on the opposite side of the road when he asked him how to get to the other side: 

“But you are on the other side of the road!” It’s recognition that counts. 

GAS Featured Poet: Matthew Bowers

Gypsies~

We were gypsies

Our hearts free

Dressed in bangles

And bells on our toes

Everything was rhythmic

Silk, flowing

Golden tresses 

Azure eyes

Bohemian

No one could touch us

Patchouli oils

Nag Champa breeze

We danced in circles

Beneath thick foliage sky

Bonfire radiance

Golden glow

Skin shone like copper

And tasted of honey

We settled for the night

Though our souls

Were of fire

Inspired by muse

Creating love

Decadence

MagicK

I thought I heard you call to me

Within a subtle wind of salt

Remember me?

The poetry?

All the art

And music that we scored?

A memory grows long and thin

A shadow just before sunset

Yes…

I remember

And wear the scars 

Of freedom and love

About me as a steel cage

Beautiful

Time

Gypsy vagabond

We had everything 

And nothing to lose

They can't take love

Away from lovers

They can't take dreams

Away from the dreamers

They can't take memories

Away from their makers 

White stallion elegance

Majestic in its beauty

Tall, thick, proud

Valiant charcoal eyes

Mane, flowing like a waterfall 

Powerful

Perfectly manicured familiar

He rides upon the air

That makes dreams

Come true…

 Matthew moved to Boston MA. and Hollywood CA. to write and perform music. Not long afterwards he merged his lyrics and poetry into a more focused pastime. 

In 2020 he started his concept The Calling which incorporates YouTube, podcast, group, Facebook page, as well as website. 

GAS Featured Artist: Hananya Goodman, presented by Sylvia Van Nooten

Hananya Goodman’s work explodes off the page. His brush strokes create a complex vision of depth and color.  Each painting is like a poetic insight into the artist, the asemic letters creating emotion in the viewer.  He is a prolific artist, his almost daily sessions produce many pieces, each a standalone representation of the interpretation of beauty. ~ Sylvia Van Nooten  

 Hananya Goodman in his own words:

Most of my life I have been immersed in the world of books. My upbringing, education, career and passion have been driven and tied up with reading and writing. A few years ago the writing suddenly turned to scribbling with fingers dancing across the page with strokes, scripts, marks and drawings. At that time, I was trying to find some connection between textile and text. In contrast with the language in books, these asemic marks had minimal to zero cognitive intent or meaning.  Aesthetically though I recognized emergent novel values and pleasures.  When I started seriously doing this art for the first time a few years ago, I saw this as an integral continuation or elaboration of a larger project called Talmud Hananya. Talmud in Hebrew means "learning." Talmud Hananya is my personal life-long project to learn about life and the world.  It is a massive collection of handwritten scribbles, jottings, notes, words, phrases, and paragraphs from which emerges gestures and drawings of organic feeling and sensing.

The images created have now taken on a life of their own. Today doing art gives me a sense of control or creative accomplishment in my life, it adds meaning and value to my life, and it gives pleasure to me and others through play and display.

I hope to pursue in the future explorations of the relationships between asemic and semic, a character set based on asemic images, and something Talmudic or kabbalistic.

Each of my images is created in the moment, without any initial image, language or intent.  They are very visceral process oriented executions in the sense of automaticity and situational immediacy rather than imagined, constrained and verified in order to conform with some preconceived plan. The work arises from a continuous engagement with the medium, until some significant quality appears to assert itself and emerges from the paper. The very moment of recognition of a quality or character is the point I stop and complete a piece. I have a voice inside telling me: "stop this piece" and "stop this session."

I consider each image as a character, both in a personal identity sense, and in an ideographic/logography sense. As these characters are born and fill my studio and begin to interact in meaningful new ways, I hope one day to join them into a cohesive language family. They live with me and one another in a sense, so I have trouble parting with the originals.

Showing art has connected me with a community of like-hearted and like-minded artists and followers around the world. I am grateful for their friendship, and my images are glad to participate in this larger world.

My only real self-defined community are those doing asemic art and abstract art. There are many wonderful artist friends I would love to tell you about but I will only mention Floriana Rigo as the most important influence on me as an artist. I continue to find asemic art, and groups devoted to asemic art, to be a nourishing source of ideas, inspiration and receptive audience. I am most active there and have benefited enormously and significantly from its members who are loosely bound by the ever adaptive  definition of asemic writing and abstract art.

Most of my public works can be viewed on Facebook. 

I also have a nascent website with higher quality images. 

I have exhibited at BROLO Centro d’Arte e Cultura, Mogliano, Veneto, Italy and at the MAINSITE Contemporary Art gallery, Norman, Oklahoma.

Typical artistic materials are 50 x 70 cm, 250 gram paper, gouache, India ink and soft chalk. Tools: lulav (middle shaft of the palm tree), cleaning brushes, scrapers, tubes, rolling pins, pens/pencils, bamboo spoons, and other odd objects. I have over 8,000 pieces and do an average of 20 pieces at a time. Each piece is created during a daily session lasting about two hours. I have a particular atmosphere or ritual I create during a session which  is very important to me. All pieces are done in a fugue-like state where I interact with the media and tools. Once completed in the session, the pieces do not receive any further additions. I usually show all my work on Facebook the day after the session.

I am the Director of Libraries for an engineering college. I have been an academic librarian for over 20 years but before that I worked in education for 20 years. Originally from Racine, Wisconsin, I graduated from the University of Wisconsin where I studied biology. I did graduate studies at Brandeis and Simmons. I currently live near the Sea in Ashdod, Israel. 

Publications I am most proud of include a book,  Between Jerusalem and Benares: Studies in Comparative Judaism and Hinduism,

 Kabbalah: A Newsletter of Current Research in Jewish Mysticism, 

 "Geomancy Texts of Rabbi Shalom Shabbazi." 

 "The Legend of the Dull-Witted Child Who Grew Up to Be a Genius" (on Einstein) with Barbara Wolff 

Heidi Blakeslee's review of Su Zi's CHIRP (Hysterical Books Press 2019)

First, Chirp is a consummate work of art.  From the minimalist title to the quirky colorful cover, this book stands out visually.  But inside.  Inside is all of the nature bird magic I had hoped for and then more.

The entire work is wonderfully and lovingly crafted into strict haiku stanzas.  There are no titles, rather the work flows consistently from the beginning to the end.  All bird names and many words depicting nature are capitalized, while oftentimes new stanzas are not.  The effect is brilliantly jarring at times and achingly lovely in turns, much like a bird sighting.  It gives me the feeling that nature is being revered and deserves the extra dignity of a capitalized descriptor.

Digging deeper, some stanzas kept me saying “damn” under my breath.  The amount of restraint and imagination that it must have taken to write a book of this magnitude should be respected.  The selection of descriptor words chosen for each stanza is flawless.  I have never read a work like this, and probably won’t again.  No word is out of place.

I think of Basho.  I think of Adrienne Rich.  I can picture myself in the woods jotting down every bird call and every colorful wing I saw.  The work captures the spirituality of time spent in nature.  Jam-packed with honesty, color, and lyrical precision, “Chirp” is a joy to read.  Su Zi just gets it.

From page 21:

new leaves glow under

ambling clouds gray with promise.

Time past, parents wed.

at morning, scrubjays

collective conversation

matches the gray wind.

prodigal, their white 

elliptical strut hunts bugs

no regrets, Egrets.

afternoon, Mockingbird 

Griot of his odyssey

some lost, ancient songs.

SHOOTOUT AT THE POETRY FACTORY by Lawrence Barrett, reviewed by Merritt Waldon

 

Available on Amazon

Once I started reading Shootout At The Poetry Factory, I was thrown aback by the honesty with which this book was written. It begins with a quote by Walt Whitman, “Re-examine all you have been told... dismiss whatever insults your soul.” 

10 Cancer 

I am a cancer 

of white and purple T-cells 

generations
roasted like tits on a spit 

a cancer of bars
and woods, moonless 

I stop, pass, and lean; 

musing, gazing, hounding, 

the lone glare of hunting, 

frothing, stretch’d & stiffening, 

leathered and lathered; 

a procreant world 

inviting end days - 

hands press the dark 

From the start Barrett’s voice is strong and clear, sharing intimate details of his life during a time of grave physical illness. There are also many reflections on his past, his military service, philosophy of life, dreams, all in one perfect batch of poems.

31 Brood of Veterans 

Dressed
in camouflage
and a cool black hat -
I am real like the prickly edge 

and cut smell of new grass; 

real like three IDs,
GPS locations,
and digital fingerprints; 

real like sadness,
alien abductions,
no phone calls,
sleeping in my car;
like sirens seizing my testicles, 

like a black horse of anxiety 

swift born, hot and fast, 

upon this floor of paradise 

This book is a conversation between the man, the poet, the world and all which is invisible and near the heart of history, leading us to a better understanding of one being’s journey through life.  I hold this book up and offer it is a worthy testament of a human being who has seen war, and the hardships of major illness. In poetic expression he displays understanding, hope and acceptance that ultimately all of it is fleeting and beautiful.  I wholeheartedly recommend reading this book which has the poet/man/warrior offering a unique voice. Indeed in Shootout at the Poetry Factory, this poet gives us all of himself, without blinking.

40 Swing of Trees 

lifting steins of forgetfulness 

and drinking the world 

glimmering names 

songs of living myths 

I slip into union 

calm and refuge 

hawks and crows 

I hear tongues

 

of hurricanes 

speaking 

angry rain
and eternal life 

careening off 

a lean of trees 

INTERVIEW: 

Merritt Waldon: Tell us a little bit about Lawrence, please,

and what was the original catalyst that led you to poetry?

Lawrence Barrett:  I was born in Washington D.C., grew up in Maryland and spent 20 years in the Army. I’ve lived all over the world. I have three beautiful grandchildren and a wonderful spouse. I am truly blessed. I feel that a little longevity has allowed me to grow spiritually as perhaps mirrored in my verse. Regardless, poetry is my journey.

I cracked open my first book of poems around the age of 14, It was a little green book of German poems translated by Walter Kaufmann. I discovered a world ordered by the beauty, depth and music of words. It was love at first sight. I knew I was a poet before I ever wrote a poem. Schiller, Goethe and Rilke led me to Shelley, Yeats and Keats and so on…

 

MW: What, if any would you say is your poetics? 

LB:   A good first line, a couple metaphors, syncopated rhythm, homemade words, run-on sentences, modern topics, classical themes, humor, layers of meaning, naked honesty, haiku-moments, color, sweat, tears, farts, and a good ending. The funny thing is that this personal conception of a poem is ingrained or natural. When I put the first word to a blank page I have no clue where it’s going – it’s a mental journey where I get to experience the discovery of new thoughts. My title is always last. Whether or not it’s a good poem, that’s a completely separate issue.

 

MW:  In a search on Google, a name that popped up with yours on one of the search results I found was John Updike.  Have you ever read any of his work? 

LB:   I was never really exposed to the writing of John Updike except for an occasional poem or quotation. I am honored that Google somehow associates me with such a super nova as John Updike but there is no real comparison.

MW:  I noticed a lot of repeated subject matter in some of your poems: pills, adult themes, and seemingly aloofness at times in the rhythmic performance of life. Did you have fun working on this book? It seems a lot of your writing is spontaneous.

LB:  From beginning to end this book was a happening. The poems just poured out like never before. Writing poetry is always fun, but its work. At times it felt like a duty or calling. Many times I’d be sitting in my car in a hospital parking lot composing (writing) on my cell phone. My poetry is more of a spontaneous act than a pre-planned one. About halfway through a piece I can see where it’s going.The repetition of themes I accept as part of the natural flow of life, day to day, much like recurring musical themes in a symphony. We always gravitate back to who we are and what works. It was a really chaotic time to write with all the different issues going on: COVID, cancer, PTSD, diabetes, wearing masks, friends arguing about statues, BLM, the downfall of liberalism and rise of American fascism, acceptance of death, and the natural feeling to strive on and reach for something higher…Yeah, it was fun…

 

MW: if you had one statement or had something to tell the whole world before it was too late....  What would it be?

LB: Write Damn It!

 

Lawrence Barrett, a retired U.S. Army and Iraqi war veteran, as well as a native Marylander and transplant El Pasoan, is the author of nine self-published works: Letters from the Meat Market of Paradise (2009), Drum Song (2012), Radical Jazz (2014); Threads of Latitude (2017), Love Poems for the End of The World (2018), Cosmic Onions (2019), Yell Louder Please (2019), Theory of Stealing Bicycles (2020) and Shootout at the Poetry Factory (2021). He has an MA in Human Resources from Webster University and has resided in El Paso for the last twenty years. Lawrence has been published in El Paso Magazine (Nov 2008), Mezcla: Art & Writing from the Tumble Words Poetry Project (2009), Calaveras Fronterizas (2009), Dining and Fun (2010), An Anthology of Beat Texas Writing (2016) and online at the Newspaper Tree.  He has been interviewed by Paperback Swap; and three of his books have been reviewed by Unlikely Stories. Lawrence Barrett has been a featured reader at the Barbed Wire Readings hosted by Border Senses. He has presented poetry workshops for the El Paso Writer’s League and the Tumble Words Poetry Project. He has had the honor of reading his poetry twice on the Monica Gomez “State of the Arts” Radio Program. Lawrence has also published art in magazines and online and in a self-publication of his art, INNERFREQUENCIES (2019). His works are available at Amazon.com.