Sweet Spot

Classical deities and down-and-out junkies, high school sweethearts and the inner life of JFKthese are the co-ordinates of J.T. Barbareses terrain. The poems in Sweet Spot set up shop where average lived experience meets American history. Masterfully evokes both the specific land- and cityscapes of his poems as well the psychological types of the varied characters that populate them, Sweet Spot confirms Barbareses preeminence as a chronicler of the heroic everyday, the telling detail, the subtle reminders of the human predicament hidden in habit and memory.