I just finished Small Chimes by Julie Brooks Barbour (Aldrich Press, 2014). What a pleasure: it’s that rare sort of poetry collection you can pick up and read straight through, cover to cover. There’s a narrative, a momentum that pulls you through. I started and couldn’t stop. Here is small town life, family life, in all its beauty and darkness. The hawk eating a dead crow, picking the bones, while a child watches. The girl darting among clean sheets on the clothesline. The teenaged shoplifter. The angry mother. The long-dead relative who died in childhood, leaving only a memory. Simultaneously accessible and reflective, this book is at turns quiet, beautiful, spirited, and tough. Julie Brooks Barbour tells it like it is, and her poems sing. They’ll wake you up.
MARY MCMYNE 