Early Praise:
From the moment we enter Barrett's Reading Wind with a poem that elegizes downwinders, we are stunned into awareness of the beauty and fragility of the human and natural world, its joys, its potential loss and wreckage. In intimate lyric narratives, she invites us to live within the rich life and passing of her father-devoted physician, musician, and farmer who traded medical expertise for fresh-caught fish. His gooseberry harvest bubbled in her mother's pies; they bent together over bird books to identify cherished visitors. Even as his physical losses accrue, and they must leave their beloved home, his sense of humor leavens this book, as does blessing: grace reminds us to cherish the gatherings at table, in the garden, in the waiting room. The river knows what comes / comes again, she reminds us: these poems offer guides and grace notes for the joys and losses each of us has and will experience.
-Judith H. Montgomery, author of Passion (Oregon Book Award for Poetry)
Reading Wind immerses readers in a delightful nexus of botany, biography, medicine, and memory. The poems reveal the world of a man whose passions for nature and music complement his professional pursuits, tending to the health of patients in rural Washington. Barrett's imagery is precise and loving, celebrating her father's life. In one poem we read of the "luminous microscope / still tracking the enemies / of men and rose leaves," an image that springs from the context of a rural urology practice in which the doctor occasionally also studies roses from his garden. In others, we learn of his dedication to the local symphony, playing the euphonium and the cello, and his sense of humor, asking elevator riders "if anyone wanted six" in a building of only three floors. Ultimately, the collection turns to the author's grief after her father's death and the solace she finds in revisiting the land that he loved.
- Annemarie E. Hamlin, Ph.D., VP for Academic Affairs, Central Oregon Community College
Robin Meyers in a Beecher lecture at Yale in 2013 says, "Poets lead us to the edge of the river to drink without thinking they need to pick us up and throw us in." This is precisely what Carol Barrett does in Reading Wind. The subject of these compelling poems is her remarkable father, a country doctor, a knowledgeable naturalist, and an accomplished musician. It's impossible to give an adequate "taste" of the river water that Barrett's poetry offers to us, but in drinking the words of the collection, we feel as if we know her father and have always known him, yet grieve that we never actually met this unusual man face to face. There is no sappy sentimentality here, no maudlin eulogizing, but what there is in these amazing poems is an opportunity to drink into our souls the words of love for a life well lived.
-William Ellis, Ph.D., Professor of Literature and Howard Payne University President (retired)
A beautiful journey through a magical life of self and world, family and the family of life. The trill of a bird, the splash of an oar, the words falling from a pen-we hear the music of nature and of a doctor-musician joining in turn. We see doctor-farmer sharing the bounty with patients. These poems bring wonder, expanded consciousness, and also tears. Through his daughter's brilliant and loving poetry, we intuit in vivid and metaphoric ways, connections that were heretofore invisible. Although we lose this dear doctor-artist-medium at the end, we ourselves are changed-with new awareness, amazement, delight in each other, and in ourselves as part of this dynamic and ceaseless creation.
-Ruth Richards, M.D., Ph.D., Profes
