“I am alive with you / full of anxious pleasures and pleasurable anxiety / hardness and softness / listening while you talk and talking while you read”
The gentle recitation of “St. Paul and All That” by Frank O’Hara echoed throughout the narrow study room in Underhill Library, filling it with a warmth beyond the yellow ambient hue that streamed in through the windows. All those contradictions in life — anxious pleasures, pleasurable anxiety, whatnot and what of it — are what define poetry to Jonas Barr ’27. At the same time, these contradictions also define the artist and “not artist” that Barr is.
Studying an interdisciplinary major of queer comparative literature, Barr combines English and French literature with gender & sexuality studies. Exploring creative pursuits, they have meticulously delved into film photography, choir music, and, most recently, poetry, through a workshop with Assistant Professor of English Literature Morgan Parker.
Despite Barr’s creative pursuits, they do not consider themselves an artist.
“I think in my email to you, I was initially shocked that you’d want to speak with me [for Artist of the Week] because my first thought was that I don’t consider myself an artist,” they admitted. “I still don’t know where I stand on that.”
Looking back on the interview, that single sentence drove our entire conversation in a completely different direction than I had planned. My innate curiosity soon drove me to dig into their understanding of themself, because what could possibly define an artist if not engaging and expressing themselves creatively? And ironically, why is it that someone chosen for Artist of the Week does not consider themselves one?
Naturally, I then asked: what does poetry mean to you? For such a gentle soul with one of the softest voices I have ever encountered, Barr’s journey to poetry was not so gentle.
“Initially, I was using poetry to cope with my mental health as a young adolescent … and for a while, I associated poetry with depression or sadness,” Barr said.
Reflecting on their journey, Barr wistfully reminisces about the gradual steps they took and the challenges of immersing themself deeper in the writing field. Poetry has roots as an oral tradition — from Homer with the Iliad and Odysseus, to the historic Black poets who, forbidden from learning how to read or write, shifted the wave of history through spoken verse. Yet, Barr struggles to associate themself with that defining characteristic of poetry.
“I’m very soft-spoken. People have a hard time hearing what I have to say. Part of the difficulty of poetry for me is really finding my voice, not only in writing, but in my actual spoken, physical voice. So this is something I’m having to really take a bit more seriously now.”
A major turning point occurred over winter break, when Barr’s sister took them to a poetry open mic to read their work. Even after much deliberation and preparation, the event was described as one where they “did not recognize [themself] and disembodied for a moment.” It’s terrifying, yet so beautiful at the same time — and that, Barr and I agreed throughout the interview, is the essence of poetry: allowing yourself to be intimate and to confront even what you fear. As Barr put it, “being comfortable in vulnerability and the ambiguity that arises from a creative act makes for very intriguing and engaging work.”
Having grown so much from their past self, Barr reflected on where they stand with poetry now.
“It’s only been recently that I’ve come to look at poetry as something more expansive. I’ve been using it to explore desire, my own sexuality, fantasy, a sense of ethereality as well.” We shared a moment of laughter and intrigue as poetry brought us to a place of absolute unexpected candor. “One of the poems that I just shared in my class was about phone sex.”
Not only is this openness a beauty of poetry, but it is also something shared by all artists, students, and student artists in this liberal arts school named Swarthmore, where the intersection of fields you can never imagine elsewhere blooms under immense devotion and care.
There’s no true definition of being an artist; Barr comments on their biology course studying the aesthetics of food, in which all of the decisions, planning, and experimentation in nature closely mirror the principles you find in creative arts.
“Unfortunately, we cannot eat poems, but they do satisfy something within us that other things can’t.”
At Swarthmore, unlike the usual stereotypes that Barr has expected, the community has struck them through deep integration in both the creative and the mundane, the sciences and the arts to the point that it has been difficult finding the boundaries. “Everyone has a sense of creative expression; it’s just a constituent part of who these students are. I think being at Swarthmore has shown me that it’s an equal and valuable profession and form of activity that doesn’t diminish anything.”
In this world of increasing turbulence and changes, with conflicts emerging at every path and corner, the question of becoming an artist and making art has been the subject of several heated discussions, torn and shredded, analyzed and argued, but for Barr, art eventually cascades down to the simple act of enjoying and expressing. If they are driving us forward, then grief, pain, sorrow, excitement, or fear — which people often shy away from — are all equally important.
“Don’t be afraid.” Barr urges their peers to pursue all of their emotions, whether confusion, fear, happiness, or disgust, for emotion is what makes an artist an artist and their work feel alive.
“O the Polish summers! Those drafts! / those black and white teeth! / you never come when you say you’ll come, but on the other hand you do come”
– Frank O’Hara, “St. Paul and All That”
