INGENIOUS TITLE, SOUNDING a little like a physics textbook but also summing up in a phrase most human problems. Barnett lights on the phrase while facing a particular problem, presented in the book's concluding poem, "Studies in Loneliness, X": she wants to honor a promise to a friend to be at her bedside when the friend dies, but she also has a raft of obligations to be in other places as the friend's death nears.
Some of these obligations have to do with being a daughter, as her mother is in serious decline, and some have to do with being mother, as she has an adult son, and some have to do with her career, which like most careers involves commitments to get one's body to specific places at specific times.
There are a good many other people in Barnett's life, then, all creating problems involving bodies in space that Barnett has to solve. Yet ten poems in the collection are titled "Studies in Loneliness." Even as thickly networked as Barnett is, as an un-partnered empty nester living a life committed to reading and writing, she is often solitary. And that is its own kind of problem of a body in space.
The first collection by Barnett that I read was The Game of Boxes (2012, a James Laughlin winner), and I later read Human Hours (2018). Her voice, I would say has been consistent, marked by dry humor, candor, lightly-borne learning, and a fascination with language that eschews spectacular effects. I've been re-reading Jorie Graham lately, and I appreciated the contrast Barnett provided.
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