[New-Poetry] Goldbarth/Moonology

[David Graham]

Yes, I've been on a serious Albert Goldbarth kick of late.  Wondering, among
other things, what others think of his work.  Wondering, also, if many
people beyond Albert Goldbarth have managed to read more than a fraction of
his writings.  He seems to publish another 132 page collection of poems
every year or two, a dizzying Ashberyan rate.

He's had great success, clearly, winning major awards and publishing
prolifically for decades with high-profile journals and presses.  But
somehow we seldom see his name crop up in short lists of the most important
contemporary poets.

Some reviews I've seen have expressed weariness at his overstuffed
high-octane style and his fevered encyclopedic subject matter; others have
reveled in his bumptious energy, humor, and oddball perspectives.  Mostly
his reviews have seemed remarkably positive.  Yet he still seems somehow to
lurk at the fringes a bit.

Given his relentless eccentricity, his formal genre-blurring and
experimentalism, as well as his frequent focus on anatomizing language
itself, I'm curious as to why his name doesn't more often show up in
experimentalist circles.  Is he the mainstream's token postmodernist?


On 8/22/06 3:00 PM, "Anny Ballardini" <anny.ballardini at tin.it> wrote:

> http://www.raintaxi.com/online/1999summer/goldbarth.shtml
> He is an immensely entertaining poet with a nimble sense of humor and a
> dizzying intelligence.



====================================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
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