John Barr poems have appeared in many magazines and have been published in seven previous collections: The War Zone (1989), Natural Wonders (1991), The Dial Painters (1994), Centennial Suite (1997), all by Warwick Press; The Hundred Fathom Curve (1997) and Grace (1999), by Story Line Press; and The Hundred Fathom Curve: New & Collected Poems (2011) by Red Hen Press. Barr has served on the boards of the Poetry Society of America, Yaddo, and Bennington College, the latter as chairman. He has taught in the graduate writing program of Sarah Lawrence College, and was appointed in 2004 the first president of The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. He lives in Chicago and New York. The Adventures of Ibn Opcit is his eighth collection due out by Red Hen Press in 2013.

Other poems by John Barr in Verse Daily:
July 22, 2011:   "Outage" "Our dogs in the sudden silence raise..."

Books by John Barr:

Other poems on the web by John Barr:
Five poems

John Barr According to Wikipedia.

About Dante in China:

"John Barr has a naturalist's flair for identifying and naming the more curious phenomena and events of experience. He is a master builder."
—Vijay Seshadri

"W. H. Auden once longed for the return of a 'civic poetry,' by which he meant two things: a poetry whose subjects would be interesting to people who had no primary investment in the art, and a poetry that managed to entertain and instruct at the same time. How happy Auden might have been with this inventive, various, and large-spirited book by John Barr! I hope it finds the wide audience it certainly deserves."
—Christian Wiman

"The book's powerfully imagined final poem, 'Aristotle's Will,' is like nothing in our poetry. . . . It is a wonderful work."
—Ilya Kaminsky

"John Barr's poems stake out the intersection of wit, philosophy, grace, shadow, and an unabridged dictionary. And they travel far."
—Sarah Lindsay