TESTIMONY

Anita Barrows situates herself in these poems at the center of grief, transience, and beauty. She moves seamlessly from the glory of a summer day in the Sierra to the death of a beloved backyard tree to the horror of a refugee camp. But it is her voice that carries us, a voice that sobs as she sings and sings as she sobs. Years of perfecting her craft yield an effortless-seeming music that leads us to view our broken, burning world just as it is while still affirming the new grasses / rising abundant from rainsoaked earth / though ruin / be all around us.—David Shaddock, Author of The Book of Splendor and Poetry and Psychoanalysis We sang and we laughed as night overtook us, as the helicopters of the Occupation kept circling, circling. Anita Barrows, poet, translator, distinguished trauma psychologist, has delivered a breathtaking work in Testimony. These poems braid together the terrible dailyness of war—Barrows has served war-traumatized children across the world—with moments of quiet happiness: the scent of Jeffrey pine, sleep sounds of beloved dogs, coffee, and warm bread.This work is brilliantly antiphonal. The raised whip of the world falls relentlessly (“Gunfire . . . who’s missing?”); yet, in a city bombed to rebar, a fruit tree remains, its petals pink and white. Here, the sensual beauty of nature restores a ruptured world to eros; and moments of human tenderness fortify. For Barrows, las luchas de cada dia (the struggles of every day) “must yet be accompanied by joy.” The poet of Testimony is, in the tradition of Whitman, both witness and wound dresser.—Dawn McGuire, Author of American Dream with Exit WoundDenise Levertov once wrote that the most awesome moments of radiant joy should acknowledge their context of icy shadows. Anita Barrows’ brilliant new odes exquisitely balance the bright light of Sierra watersheds with the bullet-pocked rubble of the Middle East. From the world’s medley of disasters and birdsong, she rescues vivid details that inspire both joy and awareness in us.—Peter Dale Scott, Author of Minding the Darkness, Poetry and Terror, and The Road to 911