It’s May two-four here in parts of Canada, which means camping, drinking, acoustic guitar sing-a-longs, and late night Victoria Day mistakes, all in honour of the Queen. Yes, the Barn crew is headed to the wilds to drown our sorrows in Labatt 50 and Canadian Club, convince ourselves that skinny dipping at 4am in...
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I HAVE A THEORY THAT FIRST LOVE doesn’t count. How can it? What do you know about something as impossible as love the first time? Hell, what do you know the second? Or third? When my first love broke up with me, I was devastated. Or so I thought. I drank. I caroused. I...
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The Lesson of Caroline Up and down and side to side she sprints without fatigue. The match can last for hours; the Dane will scarcely shine a bead of sweat or fail to stretch and meet the ball right on the sweet spot. With those metronomic swings, Wozniacki can wear down the stalwart...
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Is there anything better than May in Canada? The NHL playoffs are in full bloom, the patios are open, clothing is shed, parks are green, the sun shines. I would marry May in Canada if it was socially acceptable. Or at least have a torrid affair with it. The kind of torrid affair that...
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For the duration of the the NBA Playoffs, Barnstormer regular Alex Wong will be answering questions lobbed at him by the editors. In this, the first installment, Wong talks Amar’e, George Karl, and Durant without Westbrook. Can the return of Amar’e Stoudemire be a good thing for the Knicks? By all accounts, it...
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PITCHERS ARE GIFTED with the rare ability to be present in the moment, to stand unflinching and focused, with their fear turned off. For those of us who dread exposure, anticipate failure, and worry about pain, a determined man alone on the mound is easy inspiration. The pitcher suffers heartache and humiliation, and knows self-satisfaction...
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This week our guest is David McGimpsey. David is was born and raised in Montreal. He is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry, including Lardcake and Sitcom. David is also the author of the award-winning study Imagining Baseball: America’s Pastime and Popular Culture, and is a contributing editor for EnRoute magazine. David...
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AS PART OF THE O, MIAMI POETRY FESTIVAL we are proud to have again partnered with Annik Adey-Babinski, as well as Eliza Struthers-Jobin, to extend last year’s Olympics initiative O, Sport! The collaboration brings poetry to sporting events that occur in Miami-Dade County in April 2013. The Barn passed along, with the blessing of our contributors, a few pieces...
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I WAS NOT GOING TO WRITE about the Boston Marathon. Not about the lives lost and ruined. Not about the courage of the responders. Not about the cowardice of whoever was responsible. All of that and more has become available in abundance in the hours since the bombs went off, when Bostonians along with...
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I have a set of daggers for farmland made sacred, towns obsessed with the exploits of their children, cities powerless to pour gasoline on wheat fields of retrogress, blaming the horse for her broken fetlock— I celebrate the jockey who says, Shoot me too. I was the one riding her. He locked on her...
Read more →Well, it’s April. You wouldn’t know that if you lived in the eastern part of Canadaland, where winter returned this morning like a drunk affair from frosh week on your doorstep with a kid. Your kid. A kid named Winter. And Winter’s a whiny, petulant, entitled brute who wants nothing more than to bleed...
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MY FATHER ONCE SAT next to Kelly Gruber on an airplane. I don’t remember where the plane was headed — my father used to travel a lot for business — but Dad took his seat and there, right next to him, sat the blonde-haired third baseman. Well, ex-third baseman; this was sometime after his...
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