Orwell at the Kremlin

In a distinguished, decades-long career as a poet, Bargen has turned to the atrocities of war as a subject on many occasions. None of his previous work, however, matches the power and haunting terrors of his new volume of verse about the Ukraine war with Russia. He writes with the knowledge, passion, and poetic skill of a literary artist at the peak of his powers.
~Larry D. Thomas, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate, Winner, 2023 Spur Award (poetry category) sponsored by Western Writers of America

Bargen strips totalitarian assertions to their lying bones in devastating poetic lines that illuminate the power-for-power’s sake of Putin’s war on Ukraine. Reading this collection of poems, one understands that the anadrome of “war” must be “raw.” His unrelenting vision of the seemingly irreversible decimation of all life in war will insinuate itself into the reader’s consciousness and conscience for a long time to come. Keep reading. Do not turn away in spite of the Thought Police that might be lurking in our margins.
~Julie Chappell, author of Mad Habits of a Life

It takes little imagination to understand the moral bankruptcy of Putin and the invasion of Ukraine. But it requires empathy and insight, discipline and the poet’s eye to present such a tragic subject and raise it to the level of language art. Bargen presents a fierce and exceptional witnessing that is true and resonant. This is what poetry at its best can do in the face of totalitarian inhumanity.
~Christopher Buckley, One Sky to the Next