Swimming Laps in August: and Other Poems

The author says of this collection:

“My poems are my life on paper, in snapshots of course. Â I Â try to recapture the emotions of Â remembered scenes and to render them with a moderately subdued passion. Actually, I Â have Â long withheld some of these poems, fearing they are a little too personal, but with age comes loss of inhibition, perhaps a discreet loss. I hold hands Â with the child in me, youth, . . . all the me’s, none of which vanishes from whatever I am. Â Not that I am proud of all of them, but I may be more accepting of them now than I sometimes was.”

Barlow looks back on careers as WWII celestial navigator in the Air Force (in Â service, 1943-6), Â  Â Presbyterian minister (1950-), Â and educator. Â Now, an Â emeritus professor of philosophy Â (College of Â Staten Â Island) City University of New York (retired in 1995), he was a professor of religion at Columbia University, 1966-72, and also served as a dean of summer session at the University of Minnesota, 1964-66, and Â Columbia, 1966-71, as Associate Dean of Faculty, at Staten Island Community College, a predecessor to the Â College of Â Staten Island, 1972-76. Â Earlier, he served as a campus minister, in Eugene Oregon (1954-60) Â and in Pittsburgh, Pa. (1960-62), Â and still earlier, as parish minister in New York, Tennessee, and Alabama. In 1950-51, he taught English literature at East Tennessee State University, in his hometown.

He has written poems since boyhood. Â Here he has selected over seventy. The themes include love and marriage, parenting, one’s own childhood, and life in community.

Here are a few excerpts:--

About an eleven month old son: "He salutes me and gives me a smile like Â /eternal blessing and a handful of straw /he has pulled from the broom."

About the lonely child living in the midst of remote relatives and preoccupied neighbors: "Crowded /by circles of kin /neighbors /fieriest stars /the nearest /distant ones

/more inviting /Distant all . . ."

In the title poem, which he actually composed while swimming, Â shortly before a birthday in his sixties, he sees the water stretching out like a magic carpet, yet can’t free himself from the thought of all he has not done, the books he has not read and of course the cruelty of time’s passing; Â  he ends the poem saying, Â in rhythm with his strokes:: ". . . Â miles like inches the carpet /flies it flies /into years old how many now."

As his ninety-one year old mother lay dying twelve hundred miles away, he woke from a dream and captured it in this poem: Â  "Lady wrapt in ink blue /coat in soft lamplight

/kerchief about your head /all set to leave /us silent poised /silhouetted /on the edge of the chaise longue /that reaches back to the beginning

/of time . . . ."

An elegaic example is a little poem in memory of the environmntalist, Margaret Mee:

"Forest seraph /pleading for it /for Amazonia’s orchids /for blossoms that open at night /pleading as for a child /about to be taken"

Among the poems about love is this one, from a fairly early date:

"A portrait /come alive /to my Beau of Bath /Awkward as sixteen

/both of us /innocent as five /I fell into her eyes /certain Â I was received

the moment never dies".

In the fourth grouping of poems, which the author calls Orbit, we find this one about the meaning of baseball: the title Â alludes to Protagoras’ saying, “Man is the measure of all things”: "Reach Â into the Â air /and stop with your hand /a white sphere /like Â the moon /See it again rocketing /from your undulant salute /up the blue and glint of the sky /arching against outfield /green and the dust that edges /diamond and scurrying feet /Take a Â well-formed proposition /of once growing wood /Extending yourself Â /you Â hit
the ball /Running Â you Â celebrate".

Barlow, known to his friends also as a humorist, includes some humor, though it is often mixed with a bit of pathos, Â here, in such poems as "Man in a Tub," "Interrupted," "Hope," "Odd Moments," "Sunday in the Thirties," "At Waterloo Village," "Altar Call," "over a lost fountain pen," Â  and "Vox Humana."

In his Preface he invites the reader to look for common ground and to enjoy reading the poems.