A Prevalence of Angels (Paperback or Softback)

Poetry. Jennifer Barber's fifth collection shines with all her signature strengths: profound honesty, clear and subtle imagery, and the mastery of craft we long for. Beyond nature, beyond the extraordinary range of human crises and emotions, beyond the miracles that language can accomplish: she takes us to that place where all three merge, becoming the divine.

Says Sophie Cabot Black, "These poems follow the turns of family and friendship, tracing what vanishes and what endures. Barber's voice stays open to many kinds of messengers, and in the end, "walking to where I am," finds a new clarity-as the ordinary and the human settle into grace."

Lola Haskins observes that "More than the angels in the title, it's sunlight and trees and wind and stones whose beautiful language watches over this book. Barber's love for her mother and her sorrow at her death figure large, but so do other kinds of losses-R. who jumped; a friend her father's age she sees 'thinning like a twig in the elsewhere wind.' Here are some turns that especially moved me: of lying in bed, 'one hand traced the other/the way an infant does/not knowing how to tell what is part of her and what is not'; of a long-term companion: 'We are more than friends/there is no word for what we are' and 'I could live another twenty years/with no inkling, though I lean/against the trunk of the giant oak/until the leaves cover my feet.' When, finally, she takes us home and leaves us there, what can we feel but glad we came?"