Edwin Booth heard the solemn whisper of the God of all arts. “I shall give you hunger and pain and sleepless nights. Also beauty and satisfaction known to few and glimpses of the heavenly life. None of these shall you have continually and of their coming and going you shall not be foretold.”
from Leonard Nimoy’s commencement address to the Boston University College of Fine Arts, 19 May 2012.
About Bartholomew Barker
Bartholomew Barker is one of the organizers of Living Poetry, a collection of poets and poetry lovers in the Triangle region of North Carolina. His first poetry collection, Wednesday Night Regular, written in and about strip clubs, was published in 2013. His second, Milkshakes and Chilidogs, a chapbook of food inspired poetry was served in 2017. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. Born and raised in Ohio, studied in Chicago, he worked in Connecticut for nearly twenty years before moving to Hillsborough where he makes money as a computer programmer to fund his poetry habit.
Edwin Booth heard the solemn whisper of the God of all arts. “I shall give you hunger and pain and sleepless nights. Also beauty and satisfaction known to few and glimpses of the heavenly life. None of these shall you have continually and of their coming and going you shall not be foretold.”
Bartholomew Barker, Poet 
I’ve always resented that the commencement address I received upon graduation BFA from VCU was delivered by Steve Forbes standing in for Malcolm who had decided that he preferred ballooning on such a fine day. You’re rubbing it in.
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The commencement address when I graduated from NU was performed by Secretary of State George Schultz. It was just a bunch of empty realpolitik aphorisms. Kids these days don’t know how bad we had it, huh?
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