Newman 1245.
First Edition. Of a total edition of 500, this is One of 445 numbered copies in wrappers signed by Barr & Blinn. Vietnam themes. Lovely chapbook. 8vo sewn wrappers in printed Japanese ricepaper dust jacket. Softcover. Very fine.

John Barr grew up in Lisle, near Chicago, Illinois, where he attended public school, then went to Harvard on an R.O.T.C. scholarship and graduated with a degree in English. After graduation he entered into the Navy for five years, much of which he spent on a destroyer in Vietnam. When he returned briefly, in 1966, to visit friends at Harvard College, he met with the antagonism caused by the turbulence of the political climate. His experiences in the Navy were formative, and he wrote about them in his poetry.

He returned to Harvard, where he pursued an MBA (heeding the advice of his father, a man who had no college, that if he was intent on devoting his life to poetry, he should at least have a means of support). Finding financial security in his successful career with Morgan Stanley, where he became a Managing Director, he continued to write. His second vocation was not widely known among his early business associates. "I didn't think it would necessarily enhance my career to let people know that I was a poet."