Boxing Without Gloves by Barb Reynolds

The late Barb Reynold held a degree in psychology and was a child abuse investigator for 22 years. In addition to her chapbook, Boxing Without Gloves, she published “Triptych for Christopher” in A&U magazine in January, 2014. Originally from southern California, Barb lived in the Bay Area and studied with poet Jude Nutter. www.barbreynolds.com

PRAISE:

Boxing Without Gloves, Barb Reynolds’ first chapbook, is remarkable for its understated and beautiful narratives. I am reminded of Raymond Carver, whose poems became, in and of themselves, metaphors. Barb Reynolds has this grace, this ease, this command of a language full of the concrete, full of things – plastic gnomes, hummingbirds, fists, jasmine, mangoes and shiny black shoes. That this poet hones in on the physical and the concrete is fitting, because here – from the heart-breaking recollection of a visit to a father in prison to the poem for a lover with skin of “vanilla and ground ginger” – is a speaker who is very aware of the ways in which language fails us: naming the world is an act of survival. These are not easy poems to read because they are about what matters – love, loss, illness, betrayal – which means everything is at stake. We are all, as Barb Reynolds reminds us, finding our way home “in the dark.” How lucky we are we have her poems to carry with us.

—Jude Nutter, author of The Curator of Silence and I Wish I Had A Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman