Synopses & Reviews
Here comes the new joy.
Joy has evolved, and John W Barrios has emerged as the champion of its adaptation. Barrios' critically imagined first collection of poetry reveals the mutation and renders the reader naturally selected.
The old joy is reaction... a product of immediacy, immediately lost. The new joy is combustion... catalyzed by pain, threat, sexuality, loss, hunger, danger, and laughter, it is the sum and the summit of all other emotions and experiences. The old joy isolates; the new joy integrates.
With gripping personal narrative in extraordinary context, Barrios' work exemplifies the magnitude and stamina of this emotional revolution. The new joy ascends the aggregate detritus sloughed off by the old joy and stakes its claim, a mighty pen driven in victoriously at the apex. Barrios' reimagined and redefined joy in these poems is relevant for a new time. For a new us.
Here it comes.
Review
"While attending the University of Hell I would want to major in John Barrios' Here Comes the New Joy — a class made up of intellect, inquiry, failure, heart, success, lyric triumphs, and human oddities. This is not a pass or fail class, but a place to wonder who we are, a place to light the exams on fire in hopes of a joy we have not yet learned about." Matthew Dickman, author of Mayakovsky's Revolver and Tin House Editor
Review
"In this moving debut, the new joy isn't what we thought it was, but darker, more tough-minded. John Barrios stands in the fire and makes song of that work. The song is ongoing, altogether his own, 'unapologetically / alive / full.'" Paul Lisicky, author of Famous Builder and Lawnboy
Review
"Here Comes the New Joy unlocks a box of stories of what it means to know a life and all of its personal contradictions and curiosities. At times it is a conspicuous account of Past's shadowed memories, and other times it is a thick-woven description of Life's constants. In this welcome poetic page-turner, Barrios skips the flowers, and goes straight for the mud, splatter and all." Carrie Seitzinger, author of Fall Ill Medicine
About the Author
John W Barrios is a poet, sometime essayist, and full-time father living in Portland, Oregon.