Jennifer Barber

There is poetry in our lives, like there are people in our lives, like there is beauty in our lives. Many books are bound on our shelves of idleness. But "only sometimes, someone's/ poem, like a chained dog, barks."

Tucson's Kore Press is publishing "Rigging the Wind" by Jennifer Barber, winner of the 2002 First Book Award. Before its release, the poet will be reading excerpts at Club Congress on Tuesday, April 22 at 7:00 p.m. Barber studied Medieval Literature at Colby College where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She graduated with an MFA from Columbia.

"Most writers work for years in total obscurity and I was reaching the point where I wasn't sure this would ever happen to me, having a book out. This means a lot to me and is very unexpected and very welcomed," Barber said.

The contest was judged by UA's Director of Creative Writing, Jane Miller. Miller, whose praise has been featured on the covers of nationally renowned poets such as Carolyn ForchŽ, wrote the introduction to "Rigging the Wind."

"In brief, refreshing lines, Jennifer Barber presents familial scenes and spiritual epiphanies at a time when the world needs poetry desperately and needs that poetry to be about essences," Miller wrote.

Most of Barber's inspiration came from a distant place she called home for awhile. She recounts the impact of living in Galicia, Spain: "As I was in the process of thinking about my own background, which is Jewish but wasn't very exposed to growing up, we didn't meet anyone Jewish where we were living. And it makes you think about the past and the moment of the expulsion," Barber said. "In 1391 there was a break of riots against Jews. Between that time and 1492 there were scattering waves of sentiment. Then the catholic kings Ferdinand and Isabella made the final decision to expel all the Jews. It was complicated. There were practical as well as religious reasons."

For Barber, it was interesting to juxtapose her own heritage with her love for Spain. This overlap bred beautiful wisdom tinged with compunction - a sense of bereavement for a life no longer.

"Wind gets used a lot to mean all those things that we can never really know or understand about our own experience. Things that are hard to pin down, hard to define but keep having an impact on you," Barber said. "Rigging also has a double reference to the rigging of the sailboat and also the other meaning of manipulating."

"The wind behind/ our peeling house/ ties itself to the pines/ and they set sail."

As in her poem Pines, "manipulation" takes on a perpetual influence in the book. The winds bring change, they steer us in a symbiotic direction, they brush away the ash of a past to reveal deeper significance. The significance in her words is felt with a slight chill, reminiscent of wintry coastal winds. In her collection, the reader is aware of human connections - how sacred, and even destructive, is the connection in the fragility of bonds.

"Everyone starts out writing wanting to say everything but it is always more enjoyable when the reader sees the drift of something but it is not spelled out," Barber said. "I ideally want the reader to feel that they have participated in the poems. Even if certain things felt mysterious, that they were drawn in. Definitely in my work I deliberately leave some things out so they can really participate in bringing some of their own experience to it and fill in some of what is not said."