Today, hardly anyone reads him, most of his work is out of print, and he is barely mentioned in literary histories.Yet this was no minor poet. His work was passionate, intellectually challenging and highly original, his language incantatory and often hypnotic.
Indeed.
Hedgie, in the comment appended, singles out for praise - and justifiably so - Barker's sonnet To My Mother. I would single out Allegory of the Adolescent and the Adult, which I first read when I was young, and was enthralled, and hoped not only to be able to write something like it, but to live accordingly. Ah, youth.
Post bumped up.
Barker deserves being remembered for his magnificent "Sonnet :To My Mother" even if for nothing else; it's one of the finest tributes to another person of the past century.
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