About Walter Bargen
Walter Bargen (born c. 1945) is an American poet, the first Poet Laureate of Missouri, a position which he held from February 13, 2008 to January 2010. He wrote his first poem in high school, and has since been published in approximately one hundred magazines. His first book “Fields of Thenar” was published in 1980. Walter Bargen has published nineteen books of poetry. In the 1990s, he wrote several works about Missouri, such as one volume which focused on the Missouri River. Recent books include: You Wounded Miracle (Liliom Verlag, 2021), Pole Dancing in the Night Club of God (Red Mountain Press, 2020), Until Next Time (Singing Bone Press, 2019), Too Quick for the Living (Moon City Press, 2017) and My Other Mother’s Red Mercedes (Lamar University Press, 2018). His awards include: a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Chester H. Jones Foundation Award, and the William Rockhill Nelson Award. He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2010). His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in over 300 magazines, including American Literary Review, American Letters & Commentary, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Georgia Review, International Quarterly, Missouri Review, New Letters, New Novel Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, River Styx, Seneca Review and Sycamore Review.Browse all poems and texts published on Walter Bargen
Each delicately and fiercely imaged poem is a tribute to perseverence and survival and a lesson for us all.
