Quan Barry begins Auction, her fifth book of poetry, with a Vincent Van Gogh quote: “If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is grass in the beginning.” The poems in this collection take into account a transformation and a recognition of those stages, of being in the moment, the “now.”
Throughout this collection, Barry brings in wide-ranging locales and perspectives — Italy, Africa, Wolof, Lake Monona, Indochina, and others. She draws upon the work of young activist poet Danez Smith; Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh; poet-priest Spencer Reece; and artist Do Ho Suh.
During a question and answer segment of a recorded reading at 92nd Street Y with Ocean Vuong, Barry explained: “for me, poetry is a space of question asking. Like, if I’m interested in a question, I go to the poem.” Barry has done some intensive observation and philosophical questioning in the eight years since her last poetry collection. Auction consistently queries and subtly defines, seeking out meaning beyond the surface. Often, there is conflict in such unexpected contrasts, themes that overlap and result in surprisingly humanistic ways, such as with the inner landscapes of humans and animals that are part of the same living classification, or where empathy and indifference can be mixed together in responding to people in a border town.
Peripatetically structured, Barry’s poetic investigations often begin in a new environment or view of a scene or situation that with her insightful questions lead the way to a number of surprising turns. The poem “Living Fossil, Living” begins with a description of a “frilled shark” from “5,000 feet down” and the persona asking what it would be like to be such a being. Such musings lead to the leap: “I believe God does not exist / in time, but because we do, we cannot understand it.”
Or in “Foreword,” the persona “stumbles on this description of fascism: We no more saw it developing from day to day / than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing—he simply wakes one morning to find it is over his head.”
Or in “Poem,” where the persona’s reaction to a photograph of a young boy whose captor saws off his head is that of being in a wetsuit and learning to breathe, as well as the two teenagers in Janesville who lurk at the edge of a protest, eventually realizing “I kept going for one full minute, breathing in / these two contradictory elements, water and air, desperate / for the tiny piece of paper that would certify / I can do this, what we all do, day in, day out, living on / through the terrible wonder of what should be unlivable.” These pieces succeed in leaving the reader overwhelmed with hard-hitting empathy that isn’t pretty or what was expected.
A number of poems — “Auction,” “Keur Moussa,” “In the Family,” “Unrequited Nocturne,” “Unrequited Nocturne as Dream,” and “Rough Air” — are written in segments separated by ellipses. Here, the poet takes on broader and more complicated themes that may require patience and many readings. Multiple recitations out loud may reflect a different emphasis as the images and sounds go beyond a superficial initial delivery. In the “Notes” at the back of the book are sources from museums and exhibits that aided Barry in writing some of these poems.
The second, center section of Auction is “Dies und Das Pocket Field Guide to Occupied Lands,” in which Barry states: “came from a visit to Vienna’s Museum of Military History where I saw an exhibit of early twentieth-century pocket-sized field guides published for soldiers.” Here, there are 17 seven-line verse pieces where the title continues into the body of the poem. In “The Bible of These Vulgarians,” the language and imagery is lyrical: “Someone wakes in the long night of the super moon, the black smoke / of fireworks shawling the sky. The pain so acute she feels it in her hair, / and so hand over hand she lets love’s black rope out from her heart / and is healed. Everyone knows the true god comes with a sword / bulging in his mouth.” Again, Barry’s use of extremes is direct and unflinching as the diction shifts to colloquial: “Their god is the god of loose knots and weak beams. / Their god coos, ‘Good effort,’ and, ‘You’ll get ’em next time, tiger.’” In this section, the shorter form reveals very sharp, satisfying poetic endings.
Quan Barry’s poetry is innovative and interesting. More importantly, her work leads me to further meditations I would not have otherwise considered. I found more with each rereading. It’s no wonder that The New York Times named Auction one of the best poetry collections of 2023.
