Barefoot

by Kevin Hart

Overview

Barefoot is Kevin Hart’s eighth collection of poems; it is rich in elegies, meditations on lost love, and celebrations of new love. The title speaks of mourning, pilgrimage, and the direct sensuous contact of flesh with earth. Harold Bloom has long extolled Hart as a “visionary of desire,” and in this collection we find that vision deepened and that desire extended. Never before has Hart stretched his range of inspiration quite so far; while continuing to draw from Christianity, he also responds to the rich heritage of American Blues, and reveals a wit as sharp as a razor’s edge. The poetry is at once religious poetry and love poetry; indeed, the “religious poetry” is itself love poetry. Always, Hart speaks to us in words that seem inevitable in their simplicity. As he himself has written, “The best conductor of mystery is clarity. The true bearer of complexity is simplicity.” Barefoot will delight poetry lovers everywhere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780268103163
Publisher:	University of Notre Dame Press
Publication date:	02/01/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	92
File size:	857 KB

About the Author

Kevin Hart is the Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of many books, including Wild Track (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015).

Kevin Hart is an Anglo-Australian theologian, philosopher and poet. He is currently Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Virginia. He has received multiple awards for his poetry, including the Christopher Brennan Award and the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry twice. He teaches at the University of Virginia and is the author of nine volumes of poetry, including Young Rain (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009).

Read an Excerpt

NIGHTS

Dark One, I walk the streets for half the night

And see my father slide toward the grave:

Look left, and death will enter from the right

Or jump on you from some tremendous height

No matter if you run or act all brave.

Dark One, I walk the streets for half the night,

Not looking flash, not looking for a fight.

A car screams through a light: a nasty shave.

Look left, and death will enter from the right,

And if he passes it’s no oversight.

He whispers, “Go, get all that you must crave.”

Dark One, I walk the streets for half the night,

Not looking for the very things I might,

Not looking for the years that you once gave.

Look left, and death will enter from the right.

My father’s crawling upward to your light,

I tell myself, while counting years to save.

Dark One, I walk the streets for half the night.

Look left, and death will enter from the right.

NORTHERN NIGHTS

On nights when snow falls fast

On nights all pupil black

God pauses too:

At night in thickest snows

The universe must look

For other loves,

And proofs of God that click

When read in any book

Sprawl open wide,

All night they lay askew

When snow piles up in yard

And just gets worse,

Each heavy bough in cast,

While wind takes off its gloves

Out back of house

And thrashes snowflakes hard,

Those flakes that ride the black

While we watch too.

PARTIAL ECLIPSE

Late summer, over forty years ago,

I went with friends to laze around

Some reeds beside a stream,

The evening overfull with time,

And simply lay there looking, talking low.

Next week we’d go our ways: three boys,

A girl with whiskey lips;

And words came thin with that eclipse,

And there was nothing much at all to see,

But life was waiting there, immense,

Impatient, at each home,

And other words began their hum.

Tonight I look out from my peeling porch

And know those same old waves of heat,

Taste bourbon with a lick,

And feel again her slow, torn look.

(excerpted from Barefoot by Kevin Hart)

Table of Contents

1

Nights

Little Book of Mourning

Barefoot

Father

Grief

Old Crow

Eclipse

Again

Downstairs

2

Little Song Book of the Dark One

3

Northern Nights

February

The Problem of Evil

The Future

My Death

Heaven: A Memoir

Prayer

Morning Rain

4

Darkness

The Empty Chair

Slant

Apart

My Daughters

Death and Some Friends

5

Little Songbook

Partial Eclipse

Summer in Melbourne

Little Book of Early Love

Poor Little Soul

The Canon

Almost Classical

Merci

Happiness

Sugar

Editorial Reviews

Kevin Hart’s Barefoot is a magnificent book. Hart’s poetry has always been marked by a tenderness and sensuality and an openness to existence, and it remains so here, but that openness now extends to the negative aspects of existence, which make the book both exhilarating and harrowing. I think that Barefoot is one of Kevin Hart’s finest achievements.” —John Koethe, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

“One of the finest poets now writing in English, Kevin Hart beautifully and indelibly surveys the human position—not only our body-life in time, but also our apprehensions of what lies beyond us. The title of his marvelous new collection, Barefoot, perfectly expresses its openness, freedom, power, and delight.” —David Mason, author of The Sound: New and Selected Poems

“One of the strengths of this book is Hart’s penetrating lucidity and his passionate ideas. He is a master craftsman with a visionary imagination and these are his finest poems.” —Robert Adamson, CAL Chair in Poetry, University of Technology Sydney

"When I read Kevin Hart, I feel less alone, which is to say that I feel that someone understands my own desire to be alone. I feel a companion spirit, out there wandering barefoot in the darkness, looking for God. But this does not mean that the experience is entirely comforting; this is not some faux-poetry of greeting-card consolation." —Marginalia, Los Angeles Review of Books

"In Kevin Hart’s eighth book of poetry, he uses poetry to talk to the absent or, rather, the ambiguously present: his late father, God, past lovers, and versions of himself. . . . Like many mystics before him, Hart often speaks of the divine in erotic terms." —World Literature Today

“Kevin Hart’s Christianity is ever present even as he writes passionately of young love, titillation, and ‘thin girls who taste of Beaujolais at night.’ That he is comfortable with grief, mystery, solemnity, biblical and classical history, and humility instills his work with rare depth.” —Foreword Reviews

From the Publisher

One of the strengths of this book is Hart’s penetrating lucidity and his passionate ideas. He is a master craftsman with a visionary imagination, and these are his finest poems.

Robert Adamson

Kevin Hart’s Barefoot is a magnificent book. Hart’s poetry has always been marked by a tenderness and sensuality and an openness to existence, and it remains so here, butthat openness now extends to the negative aspects of existence, which make the bookboth exhilarating and harrowing. I think that Barefoot is one of Kevin Hart’s finest achievements.

John Koethe

"When I read Kevin Hart, I feel less alone, which is to say that I feel that someone understands my own desire to be alone. I feel a companion spirit, out there wandering barefoot in the darkness, looking for God. But this does not mean that the experience is entirely comforting; this is not some faux-poetry of greeting-card consolation."

Marginalia

Kevin Hart’s Christianity is ever present even as he writes passionately of young love, titillation, and ‘thin girls who taste of Beaujolais at night.’ That he is comfortable with grief, mystery, solemnity, biblical and classical history, and humility instills his work with rare depth.

Foreword Reviews

One of the finest poets now writing in English, Kevin Hart beautifully and indelibly surveys the human position—not only our body-life in time, but also our apprehensions of what lies beyond us. The title of his marvelous new collection, Barefoot, perfectly expresses its openness, freedom, power, and delight.

David Mason

"In Kevin Hart’s eighth book of poetry, he uses poetry to talk to the absent or, rather, the ambiguously present: his late father, God, past lovers, and versions of himself... Like many mystics before him, Hart often speaks of the divine in erotic terms.

World Literature Today