Rick Barot in Poetry
Warren Wilson faculty member Rick Barot’s new poem “The Wooden Overcoat” appears in the April 2012 issue of Poetry
The Wooden Overcoat
By Rick Barot
It turns out there’s a difference between a detail
and an image. If the dandelion on the sidewalk is
mere detail, the dandelion inked on a friend’s bicep
is an image because it moves when her body does,
even when a shirt covers the little thorny black sun
on a thin stalk. The same way that the bar code
on the back of another friend’s neck is just a detail,
until you hear that the row of numbers underneath
are the numbers his grandfather got on his arm
in a camp in Poland. Then it’s an image, something
activated in the reader’s senses beyond mere fact.
I know the difference doesn’t matter, except in poetry, ….[Keep Reading]…
Rick is the author of the poetry collections Want
