The Moon is Round, by Daniel Barry

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

The Moon is Round is a series of appreciations. It finds beauty in tattoos, Lakota grandmothers, middle fingers, Hawaiian shirts, dog walkers, old family photos, the ocean, Brooklyn, avocados, hunched backs and Play-Doh, among other things. It’s a chapbook that draws from modern master poets of watching the mundane. I’m thinking of Billy Collins, Ross Gay, and Mary Oliver. This chapbook follows that tradition, it seeks to make you wonder at the feeling of wonder. For example, a piece of clay is put in your hand. You’re asked to mold it into a dinosaur bone. But, with the poet, you shape it into a Buddha statue instead, ringlets of hair, third eye, and all.

There is a spiritual connotation. Developing the capacity of making art out of anything. Finding beauty as a reflex. Of course, there’s the basics: love, joy, and gratitude. There’s also the harder-to-unlock experiences: tolerance of kids who make you want to tear out your hair, smiling at someone who’s a little too ready to jump into a conversation, letting their mouth run on fast.

Most of the poems in this book are derived from lived experiences, picked up along the way and processed into the readily dispensed form of poetry. A few come from streams of consciousness. All of them give a voice to people, places, and things that need to be heard.

Daniel Barry worked as a math teacher on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Children tend to gravitate towards him, probably because he knows how to play like one. He’s applying to medical school and plans on being a barista. He graduated from Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia in 2023. He's served as an editor for The Crimson & Grey and has had poetry accepted by Defunkt Magazine, Corpus Callosum Press, Cordite Poetry Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Ignatian Literary Journal, and Teach. Write.