Keynote
Albert Goldbarth is a poet of remarkable gifts—a dazzling virtuoso who can break your heart.”—Joyce Carol Oates
Book Title
To Be Read in 500 Years
Subtitle
Poems
Cover Image
- “When I read [Goldbarth’s] poetry, I recall what was said of Coleridge’s conversation, that it was so wide ranging and so freighted with curious speculation, that his listeners were dazzled. It is also said that Coleridge was a monologuist, not a conversationalist, and so is Goldbarth. Whereas in Ostriker and Fairchild, one can hear or infer a give and take of voices, sometimes requiring some clarifying note or preface to identify them, Goldbarth alone speaks to us, folding in glosses on all he says. The result is often a series of forking paths that lead back to a beginning, which we understand because of setups along the way, rather the way great stand-up comedians like Billy Connolly or Eddie Izzard work, who proceed by digression back to the hook. Goldbarth’s pleasures are more than comic or humorous, richer than any stand-up comedian’s schtick. . . . If anyone is still reading in 500 years, I wouldn’t be surprised if this book was one of the time capsules popped open.”—The Hudson Review
Body
So often (let’s be honest here) we poets
will invent dreams, for our own strategic purposes.
But this one is real, and one of the few
I remember. I awoke in the future.
—from “Mailbox”
To Be Read in 500 Years is the poet Albert Goldbarth’s time capsule for a future that none of us can now imagine—a world without mailboxes, without sexual reproduction, without oil or tillable soil, without the capacity to understand music or poetry or “love love love love crazy love.” Goldbarth’s smart and nostalgic collection of poems, spoken from that future’s distant past, reminds us of everything we have to lose.
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About the Author
Credit: Michael Pointer
Praise
- "Extremely readable and a laugh-out-loud experience. This is a book that you can return to again and again, discovering new wonders you didn't see before. True to its name, it will be read in 500 years."—Sacramento Book Review
- “Goldbarth marries emotions, thoughts, and events we never thought to see in proximity to one another; through his genius we rediscover the world's history and our own. No one else now is writing what Albert Goldbarth gives us because no one else can.”—Frederick Busch
