Poetry review – A PREVALENCE OF ANGELS: Charles Rammelkamp finds an unusually strong sense of awe and reverence in Jennifer Barber’s poems
A Prevalence of Angels
Jennifer Barber
The Word Works, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-944585-94-5
$19.00 88 pages
Toward the end of her introspective new collection, Jennifer Barber concludes the poem, “I don’t know why”: ‘Everything was okay. Nothing was.’ It’s the confusing duality at the heart of her verse, her perspective. So much joy. So much sorrow. Similarly, she begins the poem, “At Winter’s End”:
I can’t find the gift book
Ann sent me, Gratitude,
which I wasn’t planning to read
but isn’t it true nobody wants
a book called My Simmering Despair…
Barber’s good humor comes down mainly on the side of hope, even as she continues to be perplexed by the enigma of existence. Her poetry is filled with awe at the wonders of the natural world and takes comfort in the wisdom of prayer and Biblical literature. But oh, the heartrending sorrows of physical decline and death are challenges to the spirit. The short poem, “Scribbled on a Torn Check” captures both the wonder and the heartbreak of life.
How to fathom the grass
soaked with dew at dawn,
dry as straw by afternoon?
Or my mother’s last three days,
the way she knew my face
on the first and second
but on the third saw
only where she was entering?
In poems like “Antiphon: Leaves,” “Antiphon: Wind,” “These Days,” “To the Psalms,” and “Wisdom, in Job 28,” she finds solace in the insights of ancient writings, practical advice, moral instruction, reflections on suffering and how the universe is sorted out. Barber’s focus on leaves and grass, of course, make one think of Walt Whitman. Indeed, there is something Whitmanesque in her outlook, the awe, the reverence, the humility. “To the Psalms” is an ode in point as it praises the wisdom inherent in David’s verses with reference to grasses in a field. It begins:
You seed yourselves like grasses
in a field but also between
the stones of an ancient street.
The main point of Job 28 is that true wisdom cannot be found, mined, or purchased by human effort but belongs exclusively to God, though where “God” fits into Barber’s viewpoint is unclear since there’s no mention of the deity in her poems, but the limitations of human understanding are all too plain:
No falcon’s eye has seen it.
No eagle grasps it with her claw.
No mine shaft leads to it.
No ruby or topaz equals it.
Rather, Barber confesses to being bewildered ‘by those nos and nots.’ So she closes the book, takes a nap.
There are angels in her poems. In the title poem, indeed, the angels come to sweep away ‘weeks of dismay.’ These angels ‘wait / for the recurrence of rage, / theirs—mine—yours.’
In the very first poem in the collection, “Limits of Flight,” Barber alludes to ‘the Angel of Presence’ who ‘once came to describe // dew at dawn, hoarfrost at night,’ i.e., nature. Barber includes a stunning simile in her description:
Bullfrogs warbled in the pond
like a chorus of rubber bands.
She writes of angels again in “In Lens magazine”:
I read “the angle is wide”
as “the angel is wide”
his wings are wide
he turns sideways to get through
the open door
at the end of the hall
he maneuvers
the bunched silk of his feathers
light erodes
the edges of trees
October rotates in bright cold
he shifts his shoulders
like any of us
I watch him as long as I can
then step inside
the shelter of his wings
Again, the angel is a comforting presence. Ishtar, the “Queen of Heaven,” another angel – the Mesopotamian goddess of love, sexuality and war – also receives praise in “It Is” (‘Ishtar, if you hear these words, / unleash me from uncertainty.’) and in “Prayer to Ishtar” in which the poet confesses, ‘My field lies fallow’ and beseeches the angel to ‘Ease my anguish—I know you can.’
Prayer is a frequent stance that Barber takes, facing the world and the challenges of living, in all humility seeking guidance. Also in the poem, “It Is,” she confesses her love of ‘the word / trespass in the Book of Common Prayer’ and alludes to ‘wind trespassing the grass / late September…’ Barber continues this theme in “Days of Years of Days” in which her reverence of nature is expressed in praise for the lilac bush by a chain-link fence, a copper beech towering ‘like a god.’
Forgive me my daily trespasses,
I ask the oak as dusk comes on.
The heartbreaks Barber mentions include the visible decline of her parents and also the suicide of a friend she refers to as “R.” In the poem, “My friend R. stepped from the ledge” she tells of his leap from his window to his death, and informs us in “Say What You Will” that ‘he chose his death / rather than endure his blood disease.’ Again, her uncertainty is all too painfully plain; in “Farmhouse Room” Barber asks,
If R. were alive,
would he needle me
for taking time in the country,
as if my stay here
could do the work of a elegy?
But it is precisely this reliance on nature that sustains her. In so many beautiful poems her praise of the natural world is overwhelming. Her poem in praise of the muskox (“Muskox”), of the tenacity of gorse (“On the Island of Sark”), on the cycle of the seasons (“Astonishment,” “Last July,” “At Winter’s End,” “Month of May,” “Last June”) all demonstrate Barber’s awe of the world, her affirmation of existence.
Jennifer Barber’s poetry is like prayer itself, in its humility, its recognition of sorrow and setback, and especially in its implicit YES to existence, to the world, to love.
Oct 30 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Jennifer Barber
Poetry review – A PREVALENCE OF ANGELS: Charles Rammelkamp finds an unusually strong sense of awe and reverence in Jennifer Barber’s poems
A Prevalence of Angels
Jennifer Barber
The Word Works, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-944585-94-5
$19.00 88 pages
Toward the end of her introspective new collection, Jennifer Barber concludes the poem, “I don’t know why”: ‘Everything was okay. Nothing was.’ It’s the confusing duality at the heart of her verse, her perspective. So much joy. So much sorrow. Similarly, she begins the poem, “At Winter’s End”:
I can’t find the gift book
Ann sent me, Gratitude,
which I wasn’t planning to read
but isn’t it true nobody wants
a book called My Simmering Despair…
Barber’s good humor comes down mainly on the side of hope, even as she continues to be perplexed by the enigma of existence. Her poetry is filled with awe at the wonders of the natural world and takes comfort in the wisdom of prayer and Biblical literature. But oh, the heartrending sorrows of physical decline and death are challenges to the spirit. The short poem, “Scribbled on a Torn Check” captures both the wonder and the heartbreak of life.
How to fathom the grass
soaked with dew at dawn,
dry as straw by afternoon?
Or my mother’s last three days,
the way she knew my face
on the first and second
but on the third saw
only where she was entering?
In poems like “Antiphon: Leaves,” “Antiphon: Wind,” “These Days,” “To the Psalms,” and “Wisdom, in Job 28,” she finds solace in the insights of ancient writings, practical advice, moral instruction, reflections on suffering and how the universe is sorted out. Barber’s focus on leaves and grass, of course, make one think of Walt Whitman. Indeed, there is something Whitmanesque in her outlook, the awe, the reverence, the humility. “To the Psalms” is an ode in point as it praises the wisdom inherent in David’s verses with reference to grasses in a field. It begins:
You seed yourselves like grasses
in a field but also between
the stones of an ancient street.
The main point of Job 28 is that true wisdom cannot be found, mined, or purchased by human effort but belongs exclusively to God, though where “God” fits into Barber’s viewpoint is unclear since there’s no mention of the deity in her poems, but the limitations of human understanding are all too plain:
No falcon’s eye has seen it.
No eagle grasps it with her claw.
No mine shaft leads to it.
No ruby or topaz equals it.
Rather, Barber confesses to being bewildered ‘by those nos and nots.’ So she closes the book, takes a nap.
There are angels in her poems. In the title poem, indeed, the angels come to sweep away ‘weeks of dismay.’ These angels ‘wait / for the recurrence of rage, / theirs—mine—yours.’
In the very first poem in the collection, “Limits of Flight,” Barber alludes to ‘the Angel of Presence’ who ‘once came to describe // dew at dawn, hoarfrost at night,’ i.e., nature. Barber includes a stunning simile in her description:
Bullfrogs warbled in the pond
like a chorus of rubber bands.
She writes of angels again in “In Lens magazine”:
I read “the angle is wide”
as “the angel is wide”
his wings are wide
he turns sideways to get through
the open door
at the end of the hall
he maneuvers
the bunched silk of his feathers
light erodes
the edges of trees
October rotates in bright cold
he shifts his shoulders
like any of us
I watch him as long as I can
then step inside
the shelter of his wings
Again, the angel is a comforting presence. Ishtar, the “Queen of Heaven,” another angel – the Mesopotamian goddess of love, sexuality and war – also receives praise in “It Is” (‘Ishtar, if you hear these words, / unleash me from uncertainty.’) and in “Prayer to Ishtar” in which the poet confesses, ‘My field lies fallow’ and beseeches the angel to ‘Ease my anguish—I know you can.’
Prayer is a frequent stance that Barber takes, facing the world and the challenges of living, in all humility seeking guidance. Also in the poem, “It Is,” she confesses her love of ‘the word / trespass in the Book of Common Prayer’ and alludes to ‘wind trespassing the grass / late September…’ Barber continues this theme in “Days of Years of Days” in which her reverence of nature is expressed in praise for the lilac bush by a chain-link fence, a copper beech towering ‘like a god.’
Forgive me my daily trespasses,
I ask the oak as dusk comes on.
The heartbreaks Barber mentions include the visible decline of her parents and also the suicide of a friend she refers to as “R.” In the poem, “My friend R. stepped from the ledge” she tells of his leap from his window to his death, and informs us in “Say What You Will” that ‘he chose his death / rather than endure his blood disease.’ Again, her uncertainty is all too painfully plain; in “Farmhouse Room” Barber asks,
If R. were alive,
would he needle me
for taking time in the country,
as if my stay here
could do the work of a elegy?
But it is precisely this reliance on nature that sustains her. In so many beautiful poems her praise of the natural world is overwhelming. Her poem in praise of the muskox (“Muskox”), of the tenacity of gorse (“On the Island of Sark”), on the cycle of the seasons (“Astonishment,” “Last July,” “At Winter’s End,” “Month of May,” “Last June”) all demonstrate Barber’s awe of the world, her affirmation of existence.
Jennifer Barber’s poetry is like prayer itself, in its humility, its recognition of sorrow and setback, and especially in its implicit YES to existence, to the world, to love.