Beyond Baroque stalwart Barry Spacks passed away January 28.
Barry was a UCSB Professor and Santa Barbara Poet Laureate who read
at Beyond Baroque several times over the decades, most recently in 2012.
Barry was an active supporter of the poetry community and leaves behind
a distinguished body of poetry.
BARRY SPACKS
ReplyDelete(1931-2014)
First Santa Barbara Poet Laureate
Beloved and esteemed teacher for sixty years, author of numerous prize-winning poetry collections, novels, short stories, poems in pixel and print, essays, reviews, Pulitzer Prize nominee, painter and collagist, singer, song-writer, screen writer, undefeatable believer in the high worth to be found in all human beings, dedicated Buddhist, husband and father, grandest of friends, and accessible to all as such.
Our sense of loss all the more keenly felt because we always knew what he is and was. His presence honored the best in us. His correspondence always ending with onward, or on and on, never a question he wouldn’t answer.
A memorial service was held at the Contemporary Art Museum, second floor of Paseo Nuevo, March 9, 2014, 3:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.
A retrospective of Barry’s art will be on exhibit for 2 months at Sullivan Goss Gallery, 7 E. Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara
WITHIN ANOTHER LIFE by Barry Spacks
Those whose days were grudging or confused
may come back trapped within another life
as a boulder, or a pane of glass,
or a door that suffers every time it's slammed.
If I return a boulder, love, some summer day
come sit by me and contemplate these horses and these hills.
And if a windowpane, gaze through to see
the meadow on our walks where the brown geese strut.
And if I am a door, come home through me,
be sure I'll keep you safe.
And if a knotted, twisted rope,
from long self-clenching and complexity,
oh love, unbind, unbraid me then
until I flow again like windswept hair.