poet

Catherine Barnett

San Francisco , CA

Poet, editor, and teacher Catherine Barnett was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She studied at Princeton University and at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

Barnett is the author of two collections of poetry: Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced (Alice James Books, 2004) and The Game of Boxes (Graywolf Press, 2012), which was the recipient of the 2012 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets.

Of Barnett’s work, April Bernard has noted, “With subtle and cumulative force, The Game of Boxes builds a complex poetic structure in which fundamental questions about motherhood, trust, eroticism, and spiritual meaning are posed and then set into motion in relation to one another. The mind is delighted, the spirit enthralled, by this wonderful book.”

Her awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Whiting Writers’ Award. She also works as an independent editor and as Writer-in-Residence at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan where she teaches writing to mothers in the shelter system.

Barnett has been the Visiting Poet at Barnard College and teaches at the New School and New York University.

Providence

This evening I shared a cab with a priest

who said it was a fine day to ride cross town

with a writer.  But I can’t

finish the play I said,

it’s full of snow.

The jaywalkers

walked slowly, a cigarette warmed

someone’s hand.

Some of the best sermons

don’t have endings, he said

while the tires rotated unceasingly

beneath us.

All over town people were waiting

and doubleparked and

making love and waiting.

The temperature dropped

until the shiverers zipped their jackets

and all manner of things started up again.