The Complete Poems

Spanning more than three decades of a life well-lived, Wendy Barker’s collected poems convey her encounters with the natural world, her reactions to contemporary social problems, and her experiences in high school and college classrooms. Adored by her students, many of whom became published poets themselves, Barker crafted verse that often recreated her presence in the classroom and her engagement with questions of identity, ethics, and the value of literature. Organized chronologically, this volume enables readers to marvel at the growth of a singular sensibility attentive to the wonders of love and the anguish of mortality.

Edited by her husband, Steven G. Kellman, and featuring an introduction by acclaimed scholar and translator Ilan Stavans, Wendy Barker’s Complete Poems presents the life’s work of a steadily productive, brilliant poet and beloved teacher.

Wendy Barker published fifteen collections of verse. Her poems appeared regularly in Poetry magazine, the Southern Review, and other literary journals. At the time of her death in 2023, she was poet-in-residence and the Pearl LeWinn Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she taught since 1982.

Steven G. Kellman is professor of comparative literature and the Jack and Laura Richmond Endowed Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary.