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Amazon Description

In Until Next Time Walter Bargen’s quiet hand and prodigious powers of observation are formidably displayed. He wields wonder into wisdom at every turn of a page. His imagery pitch-perfect, seamless. “Evening enters us. / We dine on scarlet clouds. / Marbled waters drain to pastel.” Bargen’s poems are universal. He connects the spectacle of nature at every scale to the grand spirit of the human condition. Mr. Bargen’s poems lead us to ponder the enormity of our world through a journey of small, exquisitely detailed pace.Until Next Time is a collection of compellingly readable and relatable poems, holding the reader transfixed and transformed at the highest level of consciousness.

Sample Poem from Until Next Time

“A Path Is Made By Walking” 
                       ─for Mike Sleadd

Surely, this is one of the nearly extinct
avian citizens that never existed,
who never soared over the uprising
of this great city, but finds itself satisfied
to walk on three legs through
vast wilderness parks, strolling
around its wide lakes that reflect
the high stories of buildings shouting tales
of ascendance, its broad boulevards kept
meticulously clean of the debris that is
passed down from generation to generation.

So nothing new is expected as all
the exceptions are quickly deposited
in every street corner receptacle,
all the exclusions quickly excluded
so all the street signs are removed,
all directions inclusive of all other directions,
all the incongruities quickly worked into
the design of the next monumental
construction project, and all the contradictions
cancelling out further contradictions,
lost and found identical, leaving the city
a heap of rubble and this avian citizen alone
and lonely walks to the city limits toward
the destruction of the next improbable city.

© Walter Bargen

You can purchase the book at Singing Bone Press. The listing there has a sample poem and more reviews. It is also available on Amazon.

Paperback on Amazon

Author Biography

Walter Bargen has published 26 or more books of poetry including: My Other Mother’s Red Mercedes (Lamar University Press, 2018), Until Next Time (Singing Bone Press, 2019), Pole Dancing in the Night Club of God (Red Mountain Press, 2020), and You Wounded Miracle, (Liliom Verlag, 2021). In 2023, he released Too Late to Turn Back (Singing Bone Press, 2023) and Radiation Diary: Return to the Sea (Lamar University Literary Press, 2023). He lives in Ashland, Missouri, with his wife and countless cats, raccoons, and snakes. He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2009).