FEATURE
December 2006

Tony Barnstone


THE CORTLAND REVIEW

E
SSAY
Tony Barnstone
  "A Manifesto on the Contemporary Sonnet: A Personal Aesthetics"
Tony Barnstone considers the sonnet from its formal beginnings to its evolution into the twenty-first century, including some generative techniques for sonnets of your own


S
ONNETS
Tony Barnstone

Willis Barnstone
Lorna Knowles Blake
Kim Bridgford
Billy Collins
Leisha Douglas
Barry Ergang
Ross A. Gay
Soheila Ghaussy This marks an author's first online publication
Miranda Girard This marks an author's first online publication
Myrna Goodman This marks an author's first online publication
Susan Gubernat
Heidi Hart
Jay Leeming This marks an author's first online publication
Anne Marie Macari

Patricia O'Hara
John Poch
Michael Salcman
Patricia Smith
A.E. Stallings

Gerald Stern
Joyce Sutphen
Jeet Thayil
Meredith Trede This marks an author's first online publication

 

Tony Barnstone, a professor of English at Whittier College, is the author of Sad Jazz: Sonnets (Sheep Meadow Press, 2005), Impure (University Press of Florida, 1999), a chapbook of poems, Naked Magic (Mainstreet Rag, 2002), and he has edited and/or translated several books of Chinese poetry and prose, including The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry (Anchor Books, 2005), Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese Poetry (Wesleyan University Press, 1993), Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Selected Poems of Wang Wei (University Press of New England, 1991), and The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters (Shambhala, 1996). His Chinese Erotic Poetry is forthcoming in 2008 from Everyman Press.

The Cave    Click to hear in real audio


I was the torch man, and I liked it, strange
as that is to admit. It was the worst
thing in the world. I'd sneak up into range
and throw a flame in, just a burst. A burst
is all it takes. It sucks the oxygen
and then they burn alive or suffocate.
My mouth still tastes that taste, burnt flesh. Back then,
I felt nothing. I did my job. No hate,
no nothing. The men liked me, called me Hot Shot.
But it meant nothing when the Nips would rush
out, clothes on fire and smoking, and we'd shoot
them dead. It meant we lived. Nothing to gush
about. I don't have anything to hide.
Nothing. I shoved it all down deep inside.

 

 

Tony Barnstone: Poetry
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