POET

Albert Goldbarth (1948 - )

BIOGRAPHY

Albert Goldbarth's poetry, which is acclaimed for its circuitous form and linguistic energy, covers everything from historical and scientific concerns to private and ordinary matters. His collections are often filled with long poems which range in style—some are playful and conversational, while others are serious and intellectual. Goldbarth uses this style to present a mixture of complex ideas and detailed descriptions that are woven together with verbal play and are often juxtaposed with dissimilar objects and facts. Goldbarth "has that rare gift of seeing metaphor in almost any event, of discovering a poem in the most unlikely places," describes Robert Cording in Carolina Quarterly, adding: "Goldbarth's poems, often dazzling in the Donne-like way they yoke disparate conceits, and almost always fearlessly playful in their approach, can mask the reasons for their being written. It's too easy to forget that for all of Goldbarth's bravura, the poems' punch lies in the way they affect us: over and over they tenderly remind us of the conditions of our humanness."

Opticks: A Poem in Seven Sections, one of Goldbarth's early works, establishes the form that many of his later poems follow. A long poem using surreal techniques and interrelated images, Opticks "is simply delicious as a linguistic offering," maintains Margins contributor Dave Oliphant. The topics and places covered in the poem range far and wide—including the Illinois tollway, World War II, and Middle Age glass makers—and are used to create an array of dramatic monologues. Dave Smith, writing in Midwest Quarterly, asserts that Goldbarth's "poetic blitz overwhelms us with fresh images, thought, imaginative scope, but also—as wherever mass is the product—buries us with the unfinished detritus of a mind (and an ego) whose accelerator is frozen." Oliphant, however, concludes that "Opticks is a banquet so heaped with juicy treats that it proves Goldbarth's truly one of the most fertile imaginations going."

The main theme of Goldbarth's 1976 Comings Back: A Sequence of Poems is returns. And to set the tone, the book begins with a quote from A. A. Milne in which Christopher Robin implores Pooh to never forget him. "Comings back—not goings back—suggests an interesting perspective in which everything is seen from the original place, the original time," remarks Victor Contoski in Prairie Schooner. "Goldbarth speaks of the poet as a maker of lists, and in effect the entire book is a list of various comings back, often in surprising contexts." Comings Back is thus full of dreams and anecdotes, as well as jokes, personal letters, and quotations from a wide variety of sources. While Lorrie Goldensohn, writing in Parnassus: Poetry in Review, finds that "all the poems feel the same in touch and tone," Contoski contends, "The book makes its impression as a whole in which all parts are closely and unexpectedly related."

The separate parts of Different Fleshes, published in 1979, are also closely related, tied together by the main character who fills them, Vander Clyde. Born in Round Rock, Texas, in 1897, Clyde later travels to Paris during the 1920s, where he becomes the world-famous female impersonator Barbette. The narrative follows his progression, and eventually travels back to Texas, focusing on the present city of Austin and its contemporary gay bars. Through the character of Vander Clyde/Barbette Goldbarth presents a circular structure of metamorphoses. " Different Fleshes is a work partly about the distance linking the past and present, more particularly about choices made which separate one sort of future from another," comments American Poetry Review contributor Michael King. The book "comes closest to recounting a historical narrative," he continues, "but in each of these works [Goldbarth] takes as much pleasure in pursuing a sheer wealth of suggestive tangents and backwaters in the material, merely because they are there. He has discovered them, and he makes the reader delight also in his discoveries."

Original Light: New and Selected Poems 1973-1983 presents a wide selection of poems that are arranged thematically into three sections. Diane Wakoski, writing in the American Book Review, sees the main theme of the book as "what seeing really is and what really seeing is. [Goldbarth] explores light as the source of everything and like many philosophers looks for the original light, the source of everything in paradox and the paradoxes of physics." Goldbarth's "personae include adolescent lovers, masochistic slaves, aphoristic fabulists, philosophical plumbers, and semi-literate students," describes Michael Simms in Southwest Review. "He fashions metaphors from the deductions of historians, theologians, and physicists, integrating their arguments into poems which remain, somehow, intensely personal and concrete." Continuing on to say that "Goldbarth offers his readers many gifts," Simms concludes: "His ability to see and to see again encourages us to observe the world more closely and to take courage from the small happenings of our profoundly ordinary lives."

In two of his more recent books of poetry, Popular Culture and Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology, Goldbarth explores the elements of pop culture and the physical and chemical aspects of love. Popular Culture is written from the point of view of a man whose father's recent death causes him to relive certain moments from his childhood; these memories include such aspects of pop culture as comic books, television and radio shows, music, and detective fiction. In Popular Culture, maintains Peggy Kaganoff in Publishers Weekly, Goldbarth "infuses the gewgaws of pop culture—from science fiction to rock 'n' roll—with fresh energy and wit." Heaven and Earth "involves a scientific reading of life, one that puts into perspective the chemical and physical ... aspects of love, spirituality and aestheticism," relates Kaganoff in her review of this work. Outlining narratives about his father and his German relatives, Goldbarth examines the many ways humans seek to communicate in spite of the numerous obstacles thrown in the way. Goldbarth's "rage for language is virtually unequaled in contemporary American poetry," concludes Library Journal contributor Frank Allen.

In addition to his many volumes of poetry, Goldbarth has also written one volume of essays—A Sympathy of Souls. The eight essays included, which were written over a ten-year period, cover subjects similar to those that can be found in Goldbarth's poetry—history, science and autobiography. In A Sympathy of Souls, Goldbarth makes connections between seemingly unrelated topics (such as God and Mickey Mouse) "to show how the past intertwines with the present and the mundane contains the cosmic," observes Kaganoff in her review of the collection. She goes on to add that the selections are all relevant and related, each coming across as "strengthening rites of passage."

A critically well-received author, Goldbarth remains most noted for his poetry, with John Addiego in Northwest Review describing him as "the fleet master-chef-poet of a generation in sensory overload, offering a transcendental soul-food of language and vision to our sterile, spiritless fare." New York Times Book Review contributor Phillip Lopate similarly contends that Goldbarth's "poems are so complex and omnivorous that even when they don't quite succeed, you have to admire them. In a typical performance, he will juggle many different ideas and images, not only keeping them all in the air but establishing surprising connections among them that yield a large general meaning." Simms concludes: "Goldbarth's poems are ambitious, unpredictable, profound, and funny."

CAREER

Elgin Community College, Elgin, IL, instructor in English, 1971-72; Central YMCA Community College, instructor, 1971-73; University of Utah, Salt Lake City, instructor in creative writing, 1973-74; Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, visiting assistant professor of creative writing, 1974-76; Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, writer-in-residence, 1976; University of Texas at Austin, Austin, professor of creative writing, 1977—. Co-director of Illinois Arts Council Traveling Writers Workshop, 1971-72; member of advisory panel to literature committee on National Endowment for the Arts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

POETRY

• Under Cover, Best Cellar Press, 1973.
• Coprolites, New Rivers Press, 1974.
• Opticks: A Poem in Seven Sections, Seven Woods Press, 1974.
• Jan. 31, Doubleday, 1974.
• Keeping, Ithaca House, 1975.
• Comings Back: A Sequence of Poems, Doubleday, 1976.
• A Year of Happy, North Carolina Review Press, 1976.
• Curve: Overlapping Narratives, New Rivers Press, 1976.
• Different Fleshes, Hobart & William Smith Colleges Press, 1979.
• (Editor) Every Pleasure: The "Seneca Review" Long Poem Anthology, Seneca Review Press, 1979.
• Ink Blood Semen, Bits Press, 1980.
• The Smuggler's Handbook, Chowder Chapbooks, 1980.
• Eurekas, St. Luke's Press, 1981.
• Who Gathered and Whispered behind Me, L'Epervier Press, 1981.
• Original Light: New and Selected Poems 1973-1983, Ontario Review Press, 1983.
• Arts and Sciences, Ontario Review Press, 1986.
• Popular Culture, Ohio State University Press, 1990.
• Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology, University of Georgia Press, 1991.
• Across the Layers: Poems Old and New, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1993.
• A Lineage of Ragpickers, Songpluckers, Elegiasts and Jewelers: Selected Poems of Jewish Family Life, 1973-1995, Time Being Books (St. Louis, MO), 1996.
• Adventures in Ancient Egypt: Poems, Ohio State University Press (Columbus, OH), 1996.
• A Lineage of Ragpickers, Songpluckers, Elegiasts & Jewelers: Selected Poems of Jewish Family Life, 1973-1995, Time Being Books, 1996.
• Beyond: Poems, David R. Godine, 1998.
• Troubled Lovers in History: A Sequence of Poems, Ohio State University Press, 1999.
• Saving Lives: Poems, Ohio State University Press, 2001.

OTHER

• Albert's Horoscope Almanac (limited edition), Bieler Press, 1986.
• A Sympathy of Souls: Essays, Coffee House Press, 1990.
• The Gods, Ohio State University Press, 1993.
• Marriage and Other Science Fiction, Ohio State University Press, 1994.
• Great Topics of the World: Essays, Picador (New York City), 1996.
• Dark Waves and Light Matter: Essays, University of Georgia Press, 1999.
• Many Circles: New & Selected Essays, Graywolf Press, 2001.

FURTHER READINGS

BOOKS

• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 5, 1976, Volume 38, 1986.

PERIODICALS

• American Book Review, March-April, 1982, p. 11; May-June, 1984, p. 8.
• American Poetry Review, March-April, 1980, pp. 5-6.
• Carolina Quarterly, winter, 1984, pp. 91-95.
• Library Journal, November 1, 1989, p. 92; June 15, 1990, p. 113; March 1, 1991, p. 94.
• Margins, December, 1974, pp. 37, 58.
• Midwest Quarterly, winter, 1975, pp. 221-33.
• New York Times Book Review, October 2, 1983, pp. 15, 30; January 4, 1987, pp. 22, 24.
• Northwest Review, Volume 20, number 1, 1982, pp. 136-40.
• Parnassus: Poetry in Review, spring-summer, 1979, pp. 124-40.
• Poetry, April, 1978, pp. 31-52; November, 1984, pp. 103-05.
• Prairie Schooner, winter, 1977-78, pp. 419-21.
• Publishers Weekly, September 19, 1986, p. 139; October 6, 1989, p. 94; May 4, 1990, p. 65; February 22, 1991, p. 216.
• Southwest Review, summer, 1984, pp. 344-46.