The Now: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) - Contemporary Poetry Collection for Reflection & Inspiration - Perfect for Book Clubs, Gifts & Personal Reading

When in 1973 Greg Kuzma’s The Best Cellar Press published Albert Goldbarth’s first freestanding work, the chapbook UNDER COVER, I wrote to Kuzma with the opinion that Goldbarth was “just too much.” Fortunately, I stayed with Goldbarth anyway, and by the time his JANUARY 31 appeared a year later, I was won over and corrected my earlier opinion: Goldbarth is not too much; he’s just trying, with his huge heart and preternaturally fertile mind, to be enough. His 1979 DIFFERENT FLESHES and 1990 poem-essay DELFT remain among his titles i return to and recommend the most.Now along comes Goldbarth’s latest collection, THE NOW, and it shows that after nearly half a century of prolific work he has not by any means lost his steam.In the middle of “A Work Week of Muchness” he gives us this:

 “Information overload”:I’ve known people who’ve drowned in these waters;yet other kinds of people sport like dolphins in the deep.”In that same poem, after bombarding us with snippets of history, zoology, etc., Goldbarth suddenly comes down to us with this:

“Escrow” : will somebody please the helltell me what escrow is.Also from that same poem: Fugu, the puffer fish,in Japanese, one accidental taste of its liver— or any part of the fish the liver touched — is fatal.And so (we’re such irrational creatures) the meat is considereda delicacy — “cut so thin one could readthrough the flesh.”
This particular collection could at least in part be read as a more energized companion piece to Sven Birkert ’s THE GUTENBERG ELEGIES. I suppose someone could call Goldbarth a Luddite, but then it would be necessary to explain how far ahead of most of us he is in general knowledge and awareness.Asked to explain why he wrote poetry, the late Robert Duncan responded: “In order to exercise my intelligence at large.” That same claim could be made fairly and with no trace of bravado by Albert Goldbarth.