Barn Burned, Then
"The words 'barn' and 'bank' animate the economies and concerns of our lives. Barn Burned, Then implicates Objectivism in this imagining, to create poems of the conglomerate of bank and barn—words shown to be made of contingent cultural forces."  —Marjorie Welish, poet,The Annotated "Here"andSelected Poems"I want to reproduce Bob Perelman's blurb from the back, which I think is an interesting and good entry-point into the book, as well as this specific poem: 'Michelle Taransky takes her title from Masahide’s 17th century haiku: Barn’s burnt down – / now / I can see the moon.' There, physical loss is a gateway to an ecstatic gain of focus.' Can this explain the internal logic of the poem? The destruction that comes to the fore at the end of the poem is predicted by the continual broken-ness of the lines, of the phrases."  —A Compulsive Reader