Stanley Barlow

Swimming Laps in August Stanley Barlow 1st edition

The author says of this collection:"My poems are my life on paper, in snapshots of course. I try to recapture the emotions of remembered scenes and to render them with a moderately subdued passion. And from my earliest days I muse--sometimes philosophically. Actually, I have long withheld some of these poems, fearing they are a little too personal, but with age comes loss of inhibition, perhaps a discreet loss. I hold hands with the child in me, youth, . . . all the me's, none of which vanishes from whatever I am. Not that I am proud of all of them, but I may be more accepting of them now than I sometimes was."Barlow looks back on careers as WWII celestial navigator in the Air Force (in service, 1943-6), Presbyterian minister (1950-), and educator. Now, an emeritus professor of philosophy (College of Staten Island) City University of New York (retired in 1995), he was a professor of religion at Columbia University, 1966-72, and also served as a dean of summer session at the University of Minnesota, 1964-66, and Columbia, 1966-71, as Associate Dean of Faculty, at Staten Island Community College, a predecessor to the College of Staten Island, 1972-76. Earlier, he served as a campus minister, in Eugene Oregon (1954-60) and in Pittsburgh, Pa. (1960-62), and still earlier, as parish minister in New York, Tennessee, and Alabama. In 1950-51, he taught English literature at East Tennessee State University, in his hometown.He has written poems since boyhood. Here he has selected over seventy and in some cases re-edited them. The themes include love and marriage, parenting, one's own childhood, and life in community. There are poems about love and desire, elegies, and questionings--that are sometimes philosophical.Here are a few excerpts:--About an eleven month old son: "He salutes me and gives me a smile like /eternal blessing and a handful of straw /he has pulled from the broom."