In poems well-honed and riveting, Barry Amis bears witness to the world’s struggles and enigmas. He ponders lost opportunities, the universal concerns of good vs. evil, gifts and losses, the ravages of world unrest, and the tribulations of inner cities. Profound and intense, Mere Being ultimately offers hope that one day the riddle of life’s paradoxes will be solved, and equality and stability will come to all.
—Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, author of Gathering Light and Poet Laureate of Virginia, 2006-2008
There is uncommon linguistic agility in Barry Amis’ work that brings words like “cradle” and “cactus” into insightful proximity, and offers us such pairs as “saxophoning gossamer” and “wellwanting grief.” Thus, language draws us into the intelligible world, even as it skirts a mystery. Many of the poems point toward survival: birds that “rise and hum” and leave us with wise and lasting admonitions: “Say it, / stone is no substitute / for manna.” Indeed, with each verse in Mere Being, we are being gracefully, wordfully fed.
—Sofia M. Starnes, author of The Consequence of Moonlight and Poet Laureate of Virginia, 2012-2014
One could do worse than trip in the tradition of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Charles Wright. These pieces may be “Unprayered” but, on Easter Island, the speaker in Amis’ “Moai,” who has traveled his own version of the via negativa, says, “Lie down my guardians, / We go to meet miracles.”
—Ron Smith, author of The Humility of the Brutes and Poet Laureate of Virginia, 2014–2016
