American poet (1945- )
The stars refuse to come closer
the way they have other nights.
He squints harder. They just shimmer
and float farther away.
WALTER BARGEN
"Mocking", Remedies for Vertigo
There’s no short or easy way to describe my poet laureate experience except to say I was quite surprised at the high demand for the poet laureate. I probably average an event per week at many expected and odd venues across the state, e.g., as grand marshal of a small town fall parade. Yes, poetry is alive but not always in ways that can be predicted.
WALTER BARGEN
"An Interview with Walter Bargen", BkMk Press
Not to be too dogmatic, I don't believe there is anything such thing as free verse, as long as the poet is using language, the poet can't break enough rules to escape and still be understood.
WALTER BARGEN
interview, Cavalier Literary Couture
The position has been a work in progress in a lot of ways. Originally, there were certain minimum requirements. It was six public appearances a year, then write a poem for the state of Missouri. But they backed off of [the poem requirement]. They were concerned about writer's block, and they didn't want to encourage doggerel.
WALTER BARGEN
Riverfront Times, September 29, 2009
I like space/openness in poems/poetry, and having the poems grouped into sections gives the reader a chance to breathe, to relax, to reflect, to meditate, to gather strength, excitement, anticipation to continue forward through the book.
WALTER BARGEN
"An Interview with Walter Bargen", BkMk Press
The settling pastels, the walled horizons,
the yellowing nylon curtain pulled back,
unattached to clouds and rain, but the metal
rungs ringing over the guide bar above the bed
are a downpour.
WALTER BARGEN
"Centenarian"
Disregard that they are called soldiers
dressed in combat fatigues, crowded
into the body of a helicopter, their weapons
on safety--a bad joke. They've been given leave,
are being ferried to an airport, away from
skirmishes, frontlines that are every street,
alley, roof, door, window, and at that moment
when the whump, whump, whump of turning blades
is the air's homing heartbeat, a harvesting scythe,
the helicopter missiled, is a flaming meteor,
scattering fifteen men across a desert,
others mangled in ways we are never told
but know, as in the song fifteen men
on a dead man's chest and a bottle of rum.
WALTER BARGEN
"Days Like This Are Necessary"
Overtime my writing style has evolved in part because I try to do something different with each book.
WALTER BARGEN
interview, Cavalier Literary Couture
There are so many poetic styles and ways to write a poem. I can hardly say that I've consciously chosen a particular style, but more that I've just found myself writing and then started accumulating reasons why I was writing the way I was.
WALTER BARGEN
interview, Cavalier Literary Couture
The audience's stares amputated
from their faces. Wrenched
out of their seats, they remain seated.
The shells of their ears washed up
On another shore, deaf.
Deep in the meat of their bodies
they hear.
WALTER BARGEN
"Refiguration"
With two books open on my lap, one in my hand,
two on the floor, I'm surrounded by imperfect
translations: a gathering chaos; something
mysteriously formed; without beginning,
without end; formless and perfect.
WALTER BARGEN
"Ice Bound"
Well, ultimately nothing lasts. Everything is temporal, but some things last longer than others.
WALTER BARGEN
Riverfront Times, September 29, 2009
If you wait, you grow old, nothing more.
WALTER BARGEN
"Map to the Party"
In the late1960s and early 70s, poets were interested in the way poems sounded. They were trying in their poems to pick up and improvise on the sound patterns of ordinary speech. A way to catch that was to eliminate punctuation and capital letters—both late additions to the art of writing—and focus on the plain words and how you lay them out in a line and how that changes the rhythm and the emphasis of those words. I am comfortable with that—as a way of writing and of reading my poems.
WALTER BARGEN
"An interview with Walter Bargen, first poet laureate of Missouri", New Letters on the Air
I change over time and my perception of the poem also changes, hence endless revision. I sometimes worry that I spend more time revising than writing new poems.
WALTER BARGEN
"An interview with Walter Bargen, first poet laureate of Missouri", New Letters on the Air
Writing is a form attention and trains the writer’s attention to find images and stories.
WALTER BARGEN
interview, Augustinus-Gymnasium Weiden
Which of us, in his ambitious moments, has not dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose--musical, but without (conventional) rhythm and rhyme, and supple enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul.
WALTER BARGEN
interview, Cavalier Literary Couture
Torn from its branch,
the moon waned for a couple of weeks.
WALTER BARGEN
"Lunacy"
Every place that I have lived haunts me. I always feel like I was never attentive enough and that I missed something, when in reality it’s so much more, I missed volumes.
WALTER BARGEN
"An Interview with Walter Bargen", BkMk Press
Each delicately and fiercely imaged poem is a tribute to perseverance and survival and a lesson for us all.
WALTER BARGEN
review of Poems That Come to Mind: For Those Who Love Someone With Dementia