Secret History: Poems

by David Barber

In David Barber’s third collection of poetry, the past makes its presence felt from first to last. Drawing on a wealth of eclectic sources and crafted in an array of nonce forms, these poems range across vast stretches of cultural and natural history in pursuit of the forsaken, long-gone, and unsung. 

Here is the stuff of lost time unearthed from all ballyhoo and murder ballad, the lacrimarium and the xylotheque, the Game of Robbers and the Indian Rope Trick, the obsolete o’o, the old-school word hoard, sunshowers and beaters and breaker boys. Here, to mark the twilight of print and type, are gleanings and borrowings from a mixed bag of throwback bound The Magic Moving Picture Book , Mandeville’s Travels , The Golden Bough , Franklin Arithmetic , The Millennial Laws of the Shakers , A Conjuror’s Confessions . 

Here too are guiding spirits whose like will not pass this way Cab Calloway at the Cotton Club; Henry Walter Bates in darkest Amazon; George Catlin among the Choctaw; Little Nemo in Slumberland; Yogi Berra in all his oracular glory. Reveling in vernacular lingo of every vintage even while brooding on dark ages without end, Secret History chronicles a world of long shadows and distant echoes that bears more than a passing resemblance to our own.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

Published December 15, 2019

Reviews

[Rachel Pollock]

I heard such praise of this book of poetry, I was thrilled when NetGalley confirmed me for a reader's copy. Unfortunately, I really didn't care for the poems. The way the poet used language felt contrived, twee, like the literary equivalent of winking at oneself in the mirror. I'm sure there's an audience for this collection out there, but i'm not part of it.

[Israel]

This collection was full of beautiful, rich imageries. But it was very difficult to read. The whole collection was one long poem, it seemed. We'd see shifts from long paragraphs to numerous longer lines to just two words on a line. It was hard to follow the structure and the story.

[Beth]

Not a fan. I just didn't connect to these poems at all - I found them wordy and goofy and lacking any real emotion.

[Bill]

Unfortunately, my Kindle version of Secret History by David Barber has formatting issues that make it impossible to determine where Barber intended line breaks to fall — I get three different versions of a poem’s breaks depending on if I view it on my Kindle, on my iPad in portrait, or on my iPad in landscape. I didn’t bother checking the format on my computer. It’s frustrating to say the least, and as this isn’t the first time I’ve run into the issue, I wish Amazon would do something about their poetry collections on Kindle. It’s as if they think line and stanza breaks are of no import.

The problem was impossible to ignore, but I’ll drop it for now. Barber’s language is exuberant, not in tone necessarily (it varies depending on the poem) but on the energy of the language as it almost flies off the page in a rush of alliteration, off-rhyme, and repetition, often employing a list-form. Here, for instance, is an excerpt from “On a Shaker admonition”

All should be so trustworthy, that locks and keys shall be needless.
Needless, useless, pointless, moot . . . .
Needless, needless: the deadbolt, the strongbox, the padlock lolling from the tall spiked gate, the little metal teeth all jingle-jangling mindlessly on their rusting ring . . .
Put to good use, all that glorious blazing gloop walloped anew into buckles, skillets, wind chimes, windup toys, more spades . . . the locket, the lockbox, the lockers slam-banging into the winless locker rooms, the secret hasp in the desk . . . the stash, the fireproof safe, the bulletproof vest, the chastity belt . . .

Or from “Barbarian”
Three hundred lashes for the waters three hundred strokes for the waves The straits the whitecaps the riptides the pitching swells the crushing depths . . .
Bring on the beaters
The Branders the brandishers of chains the bullyboys the breakers of will

It’s an onrush of words, as if they’re clambering one over the other to get to the reader’s ears (I recommend reading these out loud), often gathering weight and energy in their repetition, sometimes literal recurrence (the recurrence of “needless” or of “lock” in “Locket,” “lockbox,” “lockers”) and sometime reiteration via synonym, as in the opening of “On a Shaker admonition.” The alliteration is obvious (“rusted ring” “Branders . . .brandishers . . . bullyboys . . . breakers”, the other sound qualities sometimes equally so and other times more subtle, as for instance how the “a” and “w” sounds carry from waves to straits then add the “t” to carry to whitecaps, then picks up the “p” to move into “riptides”, then the soft “I” along with the “p” and “t” into pitching, then the “s” and “e” from swells to depths.

I enjoyed Barber’s use of sound and reiteration throughout, but wished for a more varied style at points, as well as for some poems I could have a more emotional response to. The style can at times be distancing or even distracting, as with a poem about Ota Benga, a pygmy from the Congo who was exhibited for a time at the Bronx Zoo.

[Joseph Spuckler]

“I'll always be a word man. Better than a bird man”

― Jim Morrison

Secret History: Poems by David Barber is a collection of eclectic poetry. Barber is the author of Wonder Cabinet and The Spirit Level, which received the Terrence Des Pres Prize from TriQuarterly Books. He is the poetry editor of The Atlantic and his poetry has been anthologized in Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. His work has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writing Conference, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and PEN New England.

Words and word use are the topics of this selection.  There have been more than a few times that I had to read something written by someone else whether it was a resume, recommendation, or a student's thesis and wondered how much time was spent in a thesaurus.   There is a natural flow of words punctuated by although correct, but out of place words that sometimes has one running to a dictionary.  Other times the same word is repeated so many times that reading becomes tedious.  Barber manages to do both and makes reading enjoyable. 

Poems titled "Praxitelean", "Mamihlapinatapai", "xylotheque", and "Lacrimarium" demonstrate my first point.  Poems like "Sand Man", a fifty-five line poem, where every line ends with the word sand and almost every stanza begins with the same demonstrate the second point.  Barber takes things that would normally be as annoying as nails on a chalkboard and turns them into an enjoyable tune.  He likes repetition of not only words but of phrases  In other poems, he invites Yogi Berra and Cab Calloway to add their wisdom to his work.  In some poems, he takes near and slant rhymes to an amazing new level.  In Franklin Arithmetic, one must guess where the textbook questions end and the poet's imagination begins. 

Barber is a word man.  He molds words like a potter molds clay.  His topics are not the most well known, and add a bit of mystery to his work.  The more one looks into the poems the more one sees.  The poem "Barbarians" is particularly interesting in that the end words of the unrhymed couplets when read alone seem to add an extra dimension to the poem.  Fascinating word working for those who are willing to sit, read, think, and discover. 

[Kristina]

This is the type of poetry I adore! David Barber shares his passions for antiquity and literature in this masterful collection, with writing that is very intellectual and mesmerizing. I'll admit some of the poems border on pretentious and I had to resort to Googling several of the named inspirations for the poems. However, there is a glossary included at the end that I wish I had known about prior to reading the collection. This is Barber's third book of poetry, but my first exposure to his work. I'll definitely be looking into his other two collections in the future.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free ebook of this magnificent collection! The ebook they provided did not retain the original intended format for the poetry, so I hope that was simply an unfinished proof issue?- the PDF download was perfectly formatted however.

[Yu]

In the part with "Diagnosis: Argyria, Cause of Death : Pneumonia Bellevue Hospital 1923", the poet stressed out a "blue sin", "blue glow" which is a very nice touch, however, as one reads on, the feeling turns banal..which is a bit unfortunate. I adore the old year and the atmosphere the poet would like to create, however, it is a bit hard to relate, or even to get into the imagination of the poet, the narrative of the poet in order to feel the flow of the rhythm.

[L.S. Popovich]

A unique poetry collection. Wish the Kindle formatting was less compact. I like poetry to breathe and the words and poems crowded each other out in this collection. A lot of rhythm changes, but a quick read. A mixed bag of images, concepts and approaches.