The Last Poems of the 20th Century



Born with a fountain pen in my hand
                    '40s
my writing went from being stored
                    '50s
on the walls of my many bedrooms
                     '60s
to the drawers of my favorite desks
                     '70s
inside folders of ever expanding cabinets
                     '80s
into files on faster and bigger computers
                     '90s
onto heavy bright paper in laser printers
                     '00
mocked-up in loose leaf notebooks
                     '09
through edgy layouts of a wild-minded artist
                     '09
spit out on presses of a commercial printer
                     '10
to finally become a completed book
                     2010

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People who don't know what to do with a silent person often stifle what they already cannot hear.
                     -- from "Silent Person"

In his mind he tried on those angelic days when the label businessman no longer fit
                     -- from 1949

"Bruce Barton's wise and understated poems of domestic love, frailty, guilt, allegiance and mystery, are deeply moving. The theme of writing itself is here— the frustrations and processes; learning completion before perfection and to retain his humor, even while he muses that 'we dreamers of the world ride on borrowed freedom.'"
                     -- Sharon Doubiago, Love On The      
                        Streets, Selected New Poems

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