Kudos:
On Green Target:
“It was a challenge and pleasure to read these lyric and narrative poems made by a poet who uses her sophistication to consider the lives of those for whom so much has been denied and whose rage now makes targets of us all.” Patricia Spears Jones
“These poems are contained, lucidly wrought, but their influence flows; the images swim through the mind . . . long after the poems are read. This is a sign of the very best poetry, and I foresee revisiting this beautiful collection again and again.” William Wright
“Barr’s is a profound poetry, to live with, mine for wisdom, and find our way by.” Cynthia Hogue
“Tina Barr’s latest book of poetry, Green Target, takes aim at the widening environmental crisis in America and around the globe. Poem after poem, the book offers personal, visceral and deeply moving accounts of the damage and of the hope—or maybe even belief—that we might still save the planet. . . . The poems cascade from their first lines with brilliant inevitability to the end.” Jeanne Murray Walker
On Kaleidoscope:
“Inside this book, this kaleidoscope, Tina Barr has packed a life and everything that has intersected with it. You’ll never return. This is a poet at the height of her powers.” Joseph Bathanti
“The images that populate Barr’s poems often veer towards the visceral and the surreal, her diction is an engine of apparently endless invention, and her vision is wide-ranging. . . . Kaleidoscope is a radiant collection.” Shara McCallum
“Kaleidoscope is aptly named, for here, in a riot of color, turn the bits and pieces of the world. . . . Barr has created a world filled with movement, shimmer, and sound. Even the bubbles in the tub ‘sparkle and hiss.’” Alice Friman
On The Gathering Eye:
“Tina Barr is our Arachne, weaving her intricate, glowing tapestries to reveal, not the crimes of the gods, but the crimes of men—together with the sensual opulence, intensified by desire, that the world offers. In her fearless vision through the beaded curtain, there is no division between art and nature, nor any border between horror and beauty—woven as they are on the same deep-dyed loom.” Eleanor Wilner
“These daring poems—by turns ferocious, opulent, combustible, delicate—undertake many projects. They testify to brutalities visited upon body and spirit, trace the jagged shapes of past terrain, and, in the book’s lush middle section, ‘Red Land, Black Land,’ investigate the complicated sensuality of contemporary Egypt. . . . Infused with both spirit and intention, these poems embody their deepest belief: ‘all that is outside can also be woven in.’ Lia Purpura
“These are eloquent narrative poems; poems of great power, passion and beauty. They are made with rigor and clear-eyed wonderment. Barr’s gaze is brave and unblinking. She looks, with lyrical intensity, deep into the most mysterious and ambiguous areas of human interaction. Reading Tina Barr we travel—not only to China, Egypt, Maine and the South—but down into the rhythmic places of love and renewal. A long time coming, this book is a treasure. Bravo.” Clarence Major
