Barger, John Wall: Resurrection Pie

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LSU Press, paperback Publication Date: March 2, 2026 Publisher Marketing: A resurrection pie is defined as any dish made from yesterday's leftovers--a meal that, in essence, rises from the dead. In this spirit, John Wall Barger's new collection of poetry calls forth the past and its dead, describing a bardo-like psychic terrain in a language of fable and trauma. The poems move fast and strange: a man arrives at his ex-lover's island of secrets; a mourner coughs up red flower petals; a man walks backward across Philadelphia as bodies rise out of the ground; a boy watches his dead sister's flea circus through a magnifying glass. In language by turns vivid and destabilizing, Barger writes the odd, the marvelous, and the wounded with unguarded clarity. Resurrection Pie is a work of serious play: absurd, intimate, melancholic. Dispatches from inside the fever dream. Show more