In David Barber’s third collection of poetry, the past makes its presence felt from first to last. Drawing on a wealth of eclectic sources and crafted in an array of nonce forms, these poems range across vast stretches of cultural and natural history in pursuit of the forsaken, long-gone, and unsung. 

Here is the stuff of lost time unearthed from all over: ballyhoo and murder ballad, the lacrimarium and the xylotheque, the Game of Robbers and the Indian Rope Trick, the obsolete o’o, the old-school word hoard, sunshowers and beaters and breaker boys. Here, to mark the twilight of print and type, are gleanings and borrowings from a mixed bag of throwback bound volumes: The Magic Moving Picture Book, Mandeville’s Travels, The Golden Bough, Franklin Arithmetic, The Millennial Laws of the Shakers, A Conjuror’s Confessions. 

Here too are guiding spirits whose like will not pass this way again: Cab Calloway at the Cotton Club; Henry Walter Bates in darkest Amazon; George Catlin among the Choctaw; Little Nemo in Slumberland; Yogi Berra in all his oracular glory. Reveling in vernacular lingo of every vintage even while brooding on dark ages without end, Secret History chronicles a world of long shadows and distant echoes that bears more than a passing resemblance to our own.

Winner of the Terrence Des Pres Prize for Poetry

The Spirit Level is the first collection by an exciting new voice in American poetry. Representing the world as a place of feverish energies, David Barber creates a virtuoso tension between playful, sometimes flamboyant, diction, and the seriousness of his concerns. Balance and grace, but also wit and verbal energy, and a deft hand at shaping the poem, make Barber's first book a superb debut.

Taking its inspiration from the wonder and curiosity cabinets of the late Renaissance, David Barber's second book of poems offers itself up as an eclectic gallery of natural marvels and historical gleanings. Creation is Barber's chief subject and he often concentrates on how human nature is constantly seeking to impose definition and significance upon the natural world. These are poems that meditate on all manner of wondrous phenomena: falconry and funiculars; the knotted quipus of the Inca Empire and the tulip mania of the Dutch Golden Age; the lore and language of field guides, epitaphs, beekeeping, and seafaring; the ghostly vestiges of the La Brea tar pits and the ancient library of Alexandria. Then, in an innovative suite of "New World Sutras" composed in haiku stanzas, Barber riffs on the American genius for self-invention and epic ambition by calling up landmark figures such as Audubon, Houdini, Babe Ruth, and Buster Keaton. With a formal and verbal precision that is rife with agile music, avid wordplay, and mordant wit, Barber delves deeply into the realms of both natural history and popular culture.