WORCESTER, MASS. TELEGRAM (MARCH 19, 1987)

An Eye Of Irony

It is difficult for those middle-aged or older to realize that youngsters who came into consciousness during World War II are now in their 30s. Their understanding of life, if they were Londoners, for instance, began in the horror of a city under dreadful siege. Since then little peace, or certitude, even has been the lot of that generation.

Moving Experience

Keith Barnes, who was born in 1934, writes in the title poem of this interesting volume that he was " Born to flying glass - bombs strafing shrapnel murder." Many of his poems are evocations of the tragic and moving experience which to many of us is now faraway and almost forgotten - fallen into perspective as part of an agonizing century.

As might be expected, this poet casts a rather ironic eye on much of the contemporary world. His is a personal idiom. He is quite often attracted to the macabre and the bizarre in today's monumental confusions;

He is a true product of man's strangest period thus far on the planet.

D.B.J.