John Wall Barger

Here is a picture my mother Jean took of my parents' gorgeous desi dog Ruthie beside the marvelous literary journal The Dalhousie Review which was good enough to publish one of my poems. Little pockets of love and light

Grateful to have a new poem in the latest Tampa Review.

Yayy!

I'm working hard this summer on translating the powerful and puzzling poems of Marina Pizzi from Italian. I hope to have a draft of her book, Intimate Distances, finished before long.

Pleased to have a few of these translations published in Beltway Poetry.

www.beltwaypoetry.com/three-poems-...

Victoria Chang: “The Swan” A poem by Victoria Chang: “The thin shirtless / man fishing by / the river. The woman // by his side, smoking.“

Stunning poem by Victoria Chang in the Yale Review

yalereview.org/article/vict...

Excited to share some good news in my life, with big gratitude to LSU Press @lsupress.bsky.social & editor James W. Long, and others I'll thank soon, my next poetry collection, RESURRECTION PIE, is coming out in early 2026. 🥳🥳(second pic is me fiddling with pages of the ms in an empty classroom) ❤

Just got some good news! Mary Dalton chose my poem “Darwin Awards Song” for Best Canadian Poetry 2026, which will come out in a few months. Big thanks to Event for originally publishing the poem in 2024. And to Mary Dalton!

“History of the Miserable Octopus” and Three Other Shorts — River Styx Magazine “Once, an octopus—many-hearted, hive-brained, boneless, muscular as a cloud—constructed a human form out of cheap materials that he knew would fall apart after eighty years at the most. He floated dow...

Very grateful to @riverstyxmag.bsky.social for publishing four flash fiction pieces of mine!

www.riverstyx.org/fiction/hist...

Thanks A Dozen Nothing! @adnpoetry.bsky.social You guys rock

Thank you to David Romanda for taking the time to interview me about poetry and teaching. It was a thoughtful and rewarding conversation.

www.romandapoetry.com/john-wall-ba...

One last Q & A with our featured poet for April, @johnwallbarger.bsky.social:

Q: Hey John, do you own anything unique?

A: 1989 R100RT BMW motorcycle!

Enjoy some great new poems by John at www.ADozenNothing.com!

Wanting to write a poem? Here's a fun prompt from our April featured poet @johnwallbarger.bsky.social.

Happy Friday! For all his talk of unlearning, our April poet @johnwallbarger.bsky.social also clearly learned a thing or two along the way:

Q: Hey John, if you could teach a semester-length class about a single poem, what would you choose?

A: “It Happens Like This,” by James Tate. The goat that becomes (maybe) Christ!

Definitely read that poem. It's great. And check out great work by @johnwallbarger.bsky.social at ADozenNothing.com!

Happy Friday! We love this poem by @johnwallbarger.bsky.social. You can read it along with five others at www.ADozenNothing.com.

Q: Hey John, is there anything you’d like to tell us about the poems we’re featuring this month at ADN?

Solid advice from our April poet @johnwallbarger.bsky.social:

Q: Hey John, what’s something you’ve learned from your students?

A: To stay open and also to let go of my ideas quickly when need be.

Painting: "Untitled" by Atsuko Tanka, 1956, MOMA

Check out new poems by John at ADozenNothing.com!

Here, our April poet @johnwallbarger.bsky.social makes us pine for his beautiful state:

Q: Hey John, what’s something you consider “poetic” about your part of Vermont?

From our April featured poet @johnwallbarger.bsky.social, some advice we're definitely going to take:

Q: Hey John, you’ve written some great long poems. Any advice for poets hesitant to try composing longer work?

I'm thrilled to have six new poems out with A Dozen Nothing (@adnpoetry.bsky.social‬) ❤️

After a super-chaotic morning, I'm psyched to be at my gate in Boston on my way to AWP in L.A.!

I'm still (living in Vermont) haunted by the dogs of Himachal Pradesh, India

I'm so grateful to the terrific journal I-70 Review for making me a feature poet in their new issue, and publishing six new poems of mine.

They also submitted one of the poems, The Great Cooling (pic below), for a Pushcart prize!

This seems about as appropriate as it will ever be

My thanks to Canadian Literature for including my poem "Impossible Household" in their new issue, and also an interview where I ramble about Italian cinema, Tarkovsky, and Chernobyl.

Philosophy of Pain - 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology An introduction to the philosophy of pain: is pain physical or mental? What is the role of the pain system? And, is pain always unpleasant? These questions are the focus of this essay.

We should talk about pain more.

Check out this article by @tcrosenqvist.bsky.social.

She asks, is pain simply "a kind of bodily damage detector, designed to inform us about injuries"?

What is pain in itself? Physical or mental? Is it always unpleasant?

1000wordphilosophy.com/2025/01/08/p...

I've tried to avoid self-promotion on BLUE SKY so far because there seems to be less of it, and that's super-nice.

But I'd love to post what I discovered this morning:

My book of essays, the Elephant of Silence, is one of Quill and Quire's (@quillandquire.bsky.social) best books of the year!

In honor of Nikki Giovanni passing:

I'm in Vermont. Maybe a state-cousin to Minnesota? :D

The Pain System Is Not a Bodily Disturbance Detector What is the function of pain? A popular view in contemporary philosophy is that the pain system is a bodily disturbance detector: pain states track/detect and represent bodily disturbances and the phe...

Hey, I’m no longer just a philosopher of color perception—my first pain-related work is officially out! I was holding out for the SharedIt link (since it’s behind a paywall), but my patience ran out… so here it is (if you’d like access but hit the paywall, let me know): doi.org/10.1007/978-...

"Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil."

Thomas Mann