To Be Read in 500 Years

"In thirty-five years of writing, Albert Goldbarth has amassed a body of work as substantial and intelligent as that of anyone in his generation."—William Doreski, The Harvard Review

"Goldbarth's ample output, frequently comic effects, reader-friendly free verse and almost dauntingly omnivorous reference—from Roman history to cardiology to 1950s science fiction—have slowed down what might otherwise be the widespread acknowledgment of an American master: that has started to change and might change further with this 25th book of verse. Here is 'my shtick/ and my stump-speech exhortation to you, delivered in spittle/ and neural knot-ways,' part of a seven-page poem that advises, again and again, 'Keep a dream journal.' Elsewhere is a five-part poem that seeks, through facts from William Carlos Williams's biography, modern cosmology and 19th-century typesetting, the mysteries of 'whatever/ you call it, animus, or consciousness—the "soul."'  The sciences, 'The Writing Life' and 'Everything' make repeated appearances in Goldbarth's fast-paced lines. Yet for all his oddball flights, all his 'waggly buggish-visaged aliens' and the like, Goldbarth returns, most of the time, to first and last things—to why some marriages (his own, for example) last: to how we deal with parents and friends who fall ill; to how we get all we can, and more than we know, out of life and out of death."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)