Budget Travel through Space and Time: Poems

by Albert Goldbarth

A new kaleidoscopic itinerary of poems by Albert Goldbarth, twice winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award The glass eye = a prosthetic eye.
And a telescope lens?―the dream life
of the glass eye when it's closed.
―from "About the Dead" Albert Goldbarth's trusty travel guide, Budget Travel through Space and Time , is a steal. For only $14.00, you
• Observe the nation of Tuvalu sinking into the Pacific!
• Discover Goldbarth's Law of Physics ("At the moment when the past becomes two futures, / it becomes two pasts")!
• Earn 27,000 frequent-flyer miles* by accompanying the Arctic tern on its annual migration!
• Witness William Herschel construct his famed telescope from horse manure in the late 1770s!
• Journey into the Paleolithic and waaay beyond to observe "The Most Ancient Light in Existence"!
• Witness why Goldbarth is "a dazzling virtuoso who can break your heart" (Joyce Carol Oates), and ponder how "Goldbarth finds startling and intricate connections where no one else has thought to look" (National Book Critics Circle citation, 2002)! *Budget restrictions apply

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2005

About the author

Albert Goldbarth is an American poet born January 31, 1948 in Chicago. He is known for his prolific production, his gregarious tone, his eclectic interests and his distinctive 'talky' style. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and won the National Book Critics Circle award in 1991 and 2001, the only poet to receive the honor two times. He also won the Mark Twain Award for Humorous Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Foundation, in 2008.

Goldbarth received his BA from the University of Illinois in 1969 and his MFA from the University of Iowa in 1971. He is currently distinguished professor of Humanities at Wichita State University, and he teaches in the Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Converse College.

Reviews

[Ali · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Think of it as McHeritage:
whoever secures the earliest one,
forever owns the franchise."

For most of this collection, the pieces are more sermon than poetry. Goldbarth strikes me as more interested in getting his (occasionally glib or patronizing) point of view across than in establishing genuine connection with a reader, which in my mind is one of the few things that really does define what poetry "should be". Even if I didn't have that issue, though, the long-winded, heavy-on-the-asides voice just gave the whole collection the sense that it would have been improved by a single paring-down pass; maybe I'm just not a maximalist, but many of the poems I would have enjoyed so much more if they were half the length, sans parentheticals. Also, he obsesses over sex and the female body in the way only an "old man poet" can — also not my cup of tea. There were some poems I did like a lot ("Scenes from the Next Life", "Patoot and Poopik") and phrases or meditations that stood out (poet-and-poet marriages being like water and water, when "you" enter the poem), but not enough to raise the whole collection in my estimation.

[Luigi Sposato · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it a lot. Very wordy, which in some cases made the poems fun and more detailed. A maximalist.

A great read.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goldbarth is frighteningly original, but perhaps an acquired taste. His mind leaps through the most dazzlingly strange connections. The title really says it all. Here is one of the shorter poems form the collection:


SWAN

Not just as individuals, but also as a couple, they
were so demure . . . no, not “demure” exactly, but a sort
of gravious quietude attended them, and then
at the end—and everyone remembers the night of alternating
operatic solos of confession over drinks at The Italian Gardens—
something seized them, something like a sudden lyricism
so demanding of its vessels, that it used them up.
The Greeks of course said the same of the swan: its whole life,
mute; and then that single one-hour flower of fine
coloratura. What’s a Geiger counter if not an ear
for how the ticking death-song of uranium echoes faintly
over time? “I heard” the speaker says in a novel of Clifford Simak’s
“the tiny singing of the tiny lightbulb and I knew
by the singing that it was on the verge of burning out.”



My copy of this book is currently on loan to Lisa Johnson.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where Tracy Smith is almost gnomic in her line, Goldbarth is discursive. Ideas pound around, different themes collide and when it works, it's great fun -- that little thought at the beginning comes back at the end with emotional force. Other times? eh. The long, shaggy lines however often rely more on the speaker's "voice" than any compelling rhythm, the result is a sort of subjectivity.

[Arthur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost as good as The Kitchen Sink, but that had an appeal due to its sheer volume. With Budge Travel Through Space and Time we still get some solid poetry, some pieces I had even read in The Kitchen Sink and yet the overall product didn't captivate me as much which could in part be my own fault.

[Dom Zuccone · Rating 5 out of 5]

One either loves Albert Goldbarth or quickly closes the volume. His voice is strangely reassuring careening around the universe we're trying to live in.

[Louise · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not a big fan of "ultratalk" poetry. Nope. Am not.