John Barton
John Barton
experience obsessed passage vulnerable
I have always been very obsessed with time. Time's passage makes us all very vulnerable and because we all experience it in our own way, it can make us feel very alone.
combining intrigued meanings might seemingly unrelated
I have become intrigued with the combining of seemingly unrelated ideas or images, or the drawing upon the many, sometimes dissimilar, meanings a word might have.
I feel very connected to poets across the country.
administer exhausting
I find it exhausting to administer a magazine without an office or paid staff.
time
You can never step into the same book twice, because you are different each time you read it.
cannot engaging fact happened notion personally point stop time
We are comfortable with the fact that we cannot know personally what happened in the world before we were born, yet we are uncomfortable with the notion that we will stop engaging with time at some point in the future.
four game past power running trouble
We have had trouble with the power running game the past four weeks,
competition patient ultimately wins
With this competition the patient ultimately wins out,
engaged few readers remove respect steps
Writing can sometimes be exploitative. I like to take a few steps of remove in order to respect the privacy of the subject. If readers make the link, they have engaged with the poem.
against establish fact football good job strong
The fact that they were more physical, they could establish anything they wanted on the football field. They have two strong backs. They are strong runners, and we didn't do a good enough job against that.
combined elements experiment hope interest mostly poem pulling various
The experiment of the poem is mostly intuitive. I write the first draft, pulling in the various elements that interest me, in the hope that their being combined will lead to some kind of insight.
draw experiment replicate
The reader's challenge is to replicate the experiment by reading the poem and to draw their own conclusions.
handle kid surprised
We anticipated it. We were not surprised by it. We were set up to handle the fake, but the kid made a play. He is a playmaker.
extra field goals points work
We work on extra points and field goals every day, every day. To have that let us down is very tough.