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The Kitchen Sink

New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007

Graywolf Press Paper, April 2009
ISBN: 978-1-55597-526-5, ISBN10: 1-55597-526-7,
6 x 9 inches, 352 pages,
Trade Paperback, $18.00

Praise
Biography

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See All Categories Poetry Poetry in English

A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Albert Goldbarth has created an unmistakable signature style—learned, copious, hilarious, and heartbreaking—which has so far spanned an award-winning career of thirty-five years.The Kitchen Sink brings together his newest work with a selection of earlier poetry, ranging from the brief, flickering lyric to the long, narrative sequence. In both forms, Goldbarth exerts a wild exuberance matched with a luminous exactitude to illustrate the complex character and interconnectedness of humanity, history, and art. The Kitchen Sink is the definitive book by one of America's most original and entertaining poets.

Praise

"Goldbarth is that rarest of birds, a graphomaniac who is always interesting. He's like William Carlos Williams and Auden in their Collecteds, or the largely forgotten Robert Penn Warren in his . . . American poetry will never again see a figure quite like Albert Goldbarth."—David Wojahn, The Kenyon Review

"Goldbarth is one of our most ambitious and remarkable poets, and his generous collection gathers more than 125 pieces, ranging from the mythic to the autobiographical, to get at the struggles and small satisfactions of contemporary life."—Los Angeles Times

"Few books of poems have sported more apt titles: in 29 earlier books, the almost implausibly prolific Goldbarth has mentioned almost every poetic topic, many that no poet before him has tried. Sometimes encyclopedic, sometimes chatty, given always to digressions, Goldbarth has written his long-lined free verse about ancient Near Eastern crockery, collectible figurines from the '40s, Jewish mysticism, 'the cookbook used by Madame Curie,' 'a spirit from the quantum (and therefore invisible) universe,' cancer, bereavement, sex, lust, underwear, 'native gourds' and 'meteor rubble,' Keats, coin collecting and 'the first of the many McDonald's Happy Meal toys / that Jeremy received with his McNuggets.' Goldbarth's breathless trivia is an end in itself, but it also becomes a means to simpler obsessions, shared with older sorts of lyric poetry. Why do we fall in love, and how can we stay in love? What do children owe their parents, and what, if anything, does America mean? Goldbarth (who has won two National Book Critics Circle awards) badly needed a new selected (his last one came in 1983); this long collection is just right for this poet of excess and enthusiasm, always hoping to show, and often showing, how 'the world / not only works but networks.'"—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author(s)

Albert Goldbarth

Albert Goldbarth is the author of twenty-five books of poetry, including To Be Read in 500 Years. The Kitchen Sink was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He lives in Wichita, Kansas.