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\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\u201cOnce more I have come to Hartford as \/ A ship moves into light and open space.\u201d<\/p>\n
–Dennis Barone, from\u00a0\u201cUnpack It\u201d<\/p>\n
Beginnings<\/h5>\n
Although he is a native of northern New Jersey, Dennis Barone has spent most of his adult life in Connecticut, including 40 years in Hartford and West Hartford. Born in 1955, Barone was an undergraduate at Bard College and subsequently he received a doctorate in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984. Just two years later, Barone joined the faculty of the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford, where he taught in the English Department and directed the American Studies Program until retiring in 2020. His commitment to Hartford is reflected in his creative and his nonfiction writing, including essays and Op Eds on architecture, landmarks, and issues such as affordable housing and education, as well as in his promotion of the great modernist poet and Hartford resident Wallace Stevens.<\/p>\n
Although officially he was a university professor, Barone could well be considered \u201cDean of Connecticut\u2019s Arts and Letters,\u201d given his tireless work over the years on behalf of the state\u2019s cultural scene as poet, teacher, scholar, arts organizer, editor, fiction writer, anthologist, essayist, and journalist. Citing William Dean Howells, Barone has described his commitment to the idea \u201cthat a writer should contribute to the world of letters in many different ways,\u201d and he has proven his belief in this claim by producing a dazzlingly wide body of work. He is author or editor of over two dozen books; he has been published by a wide array of journals and magazines; and he has won the America Award, presented to an outstanding book of fiction by a living American writer, for his collection Echoes, and the Salvator and Margaret Bonoma Award for Excellence in Writing. In 1992 he held the Thomas Jefferson Chair, a distinguished Fulbright lectureship in the Netherlands, and in the past he has served as the Poet Laureate of West Hartford.<\/p>\n
Discovering Writing<\/h5>\n
Barone discovered poetry early in life by way of the famed modernist writer William Carlos Williams, who, until his death in 1963, lived in Rutherford, not far from Barone\u2019s hometown of Teaneck. It was the fact that Williams was a fellow New Jersey native that had initially drawn Barone to the older writer\u2019s work. Some of that early influence is still evident in Barone\u2019s own writing. For instance, Williams, too, wrote across genres.\u00a0 Though known primarily as a poet, Williams also pushed the bounds between poems and prose, just as Barone has done so often. Williams, too, wrote stories, essays, novellas, and criticism. Beyond this shared desire to move past categories to let the imagination go where it must, the two writers use precise, clear language that explores the range of possible meanings to be found in a literary sentence or line.<\/p>\n
While living in Connecticut,\u00a0Barone has become deeply enmeshed in the history and legacy\u00a0of\u00a0the state\u2019s most important literary figures. In 2012,\u00a0for instance,\u00a0he edited\u00a0Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Over the years, the modernist poet Wallace Stevens in particular has become an important figure for Barone and in turn Barone has acted as an important advocate for Stevens\u2019s poetry. In 2009, Barone co-edited the anthology Visiting Wallace: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Wallace Stevens<\/em>. He has long served as the head of the Hartford Friends of Wallace Stevens, an organization that promotes both the cultural legacy of one of the United States\u2019s greatest poets and curates talks and readings by contemporary authors indebted to Stevens\u2019s influence.\u00a0 Barone founded and organized for 25 years the Wallace Stevens Scholarship given to a Hartford student and was responsible for the Stevens tribute panel installed near the Rose Garden in Hartford’s Elizabeth Park. <\/span>He is also the poetry editor of\u00a0The Wallace Stevens Review<\/em>. Through these efforts, Barone has left an indelible stamp on the literary landscape of Connecticut.<\/p>\n Even though Connecticut periodically appears in various places throughout Barone\u2019s wide body of work, the state and its specific identity is not something he explicitly explores. Key places\u2014from Hartford\u2019s Elizabeth Park to Waterbury\u2019s Pine Grove Cemetery to the Village Restaurant in Litchfield\u2014are referenced in such stories as \u201cWhat Difference\u201d and \u201cLife\u2019s Final Challenge\u201d or poems such as \u201cFrame Narrative,\u201d “Unpack It,\u201d and \u201cPond and Ocean,\u201d yet these often provide a way to ground the often philosophical, experimental elements of his writing.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cOnce more I have come to Hartford as \/ A ship moves into light and open space,\u201d he writes in \u201cUnpack It.\u201d The specific locations he mentions help tie abstract experiences to real events and places.<\/p>\n In many ways, Barone\u2019s work pushes between and among literary modes\u2014poetry and prose; wit and earnestness; fiction and essay; image and sentence\u2014to find a way to get beyond rigidity.\u00a0\u00a0His prose poem \u201cTimber Edge\u201d begins, \u201cEach person is a category who has their own stigmatic shoes strapped to their bleeding feet. It is easy to keep track of these obsessive fools. Across the mosaic on our floor it is Arthur Murray not Arthur Miller who is on the move again.\u201d In this piece, Barone\u2014or the speaker, anyway\u2014seems to want to break free of rote or ritualized adherence to predetermined modes of being or moving. Barone employs the form of the prose poem\u2014which is arguably his true specialty\u2014to place language between expectations. By its nature, the prose poem form is hybrid, destabilizing expectations because it is both prose and poetry.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI would say that the prose poem is both a form and a genre,\u201d Barone has said, \u201cand yet I am most interested in it when it is neither.\u201d\u00a0 He then adds, \u201cThat is what I’m after, partly, when I write these things: plural, indeed, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0opening lines\u00a0from \u201cTimber Edge\u201d\u00a0include a bit of a pun\u00a0with\u00a0the reference to \u201ctheir bleeding\u00a0feet,\u201d calling to mind the fact that a foot\u00a0is\u00a0a\u00a0standard measure\u00a0of rhythm\u00a0in traditional metrical verse. Getting beyond an inflexible sense of traditional form allows\u00a0freedom,\u00a0Barone\u2019s\u00a0prose poem\u00a0could be implying.\u00a0Instead\u00a0of being fixed,\u00a0poems\u00a0need to create\u00a0fluid\u00a0movement, the way dance\u00a0does. At the same time,\u00a0the poem invokes\u00a0the figure of Arthur Murray, a famed\u00a0ballroom\u00a0dance instructor.\u00a0His method of instruction included providing footprint cutouts that students were meant to\u00a0place on the floor and\u00a0follow\u00a0in order\u00a0to\u00a0learn the\u00a0dance\u00a0steps. Barone\u00a0makes use of\u00a0an ironic tension here by employing a literary form whose hybridity dismantles certainty\u00a0and\u00a0brings\u00a0into question a general\u00a0human\u00a0tendency\u00a0to stand for\u00a0categories\u00a0or predetermined types.\u00a0Nevertheless,\u00a0Barone will often use constraints and invented forms to structure his work.\u00a0“Writing is a problem-solving activity, an experiment with pen and paper,\u201d he has said.\u00a0\u201cI like to set parameters for investigation and see where the work goes.\u201d\u00a0The ironic tendency of \u201cTimber Edge,\u201d\u00a0however, undermines the possibility of\u00a0reading \u201cTimber Edge\u201d as a\u00a0polemic. No matter the form he\u00a0employs, Barone\u00a0uses literature\u00a0to explore new ways of thinking and imagining\u00a0rather than\u00a0to\u00a0argue\u00a0or\u00a0make\u00a0claims. \u201cDiscovery is\u00a0uncertainty\u2019s\u00a0outcome,\u201d he has said, and this serves as a key to understanding what he is after as a writer\u00a0and what he hopes to offer his readers.<\/p>\n [under construction]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dennis Barone – Biographical and Critical Sources<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dennis Barone: How to Be Hybrid by Richard Deming \u201cOnce more I have come to Hartford as \/ A ship moves into light and open space.\u201d –Dennis Barone, from\u00a0\u201cUnpack It\u201d Beginnings Although he is a native of northern New Jersey, Dennis Barone has spent most of his adult life in Connecticut, including 40 years in … Continue reading Dennis Barone\u00a0(1955\u00a0– )\u00a0<\/span> Crossing Boundaries<\/h5>\n
Anthology Selections<\/h5>\n