Jesus in the Ghost Room

This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Rusty Barnes is a rugged and honest poet. He is a student of Frank Stanford and Larry Brown. His language is pure Americana, deeply entrenched in the everyday, in family and in place. The poems in Jesus in the Ghost Room, pay homage to memory, and are an ode to his late father, but with lines such as Oh Father / I wish I could invoke your smell, / the way your cigarette ashed onto / the sick-filled carpet on the edge / of what we could readily say, it is clear, that this collection is about salvation, an epic prayer for the human spirit and for an increasingly tumultuous world. Even when the poem is about pissing out a fire, Barnes raises his voice to what could only be a Higher Power: Long live the resin- / filled pine and the twigs I used for tinder. Rusty’s poems are like the man himself, large and gentle. He’s a man who loves his family, especially his wife and four children. He’s the type of man who, within his own quietness shakes his head and wonders how he ever became so lucky, and a man who doesn’t take his luck for granted, but within poems gives thanks and praise. Joshua Michael Stewart, author of Break Every String