To Be Read in 500 Years: Poems [Paperback]

Albert Goldbarth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 2009

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Goldbarth's ample output, frequently comic effects, reader-friendly free verse and almost dauntingly omnivorous reference—from Roman history to cardiology to 1950s science fiction—have slowed down what might otherwise be the widespread acknowledgment of an American master: that has started to change (he won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2002) and might change further with this 25th book of verse. Here is my shtick/ and my stump-speech exhortation to you, delivered in spittle/ and neural knot-ways, part of a seven-page poem that advises, again and again, Keep a dream journal. Elsewhere is a five-part poem that seeks, through facts from William Carlos Williams's biography, modern cosmology and 19th-century typesetting, the mysteries of whatever/ you call it, animus, or consciousness—the 'soul.'  The sciences, The Writing Life and Everything make repeated appearances in Goldbarth's fast-paced lines. Yet for all his oddball flights, all his waggly buggish-visaged aliens and the like, Goldbarth returns, most of the time, to first and last things—to why some marriages (his own, for example) last: to how we deal with parents and friends who fall ill; to how we get all we can, and more than we know, out of life and out of death.
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Review

Albert Goldbarth is a poet of remarkable gifts—a dazzling virtuoso who can break your heart.” —Joyce Carol Oates

“Albert Goldbarth just may be the American poet of his generation for the ages. Often humorous but always serious, Goldbarth combines erudite research, pop-culture fanaticism, and personal anecdote in ways that make his writings among the most stylistically recognizable in the literary world.” —Judith Kitchen, The Georgia Review

“In thirty-five years of writing, Albert Goldbarth has amassed a body of work as substantial and intelligent as that of anyone in his generation.” —William Doreski, The Harvard Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555975259
• ISBN-13: 978-1555975258
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,005,860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A hypothetical future without sexual reproduction, oil, fertile farmland, or even the virtue of love, June 16, 2009

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: To Be Read in 500 Years: Poems (Paperback)

Written by experienced poet and two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award Albert Goldsmith, To Be Read in 500 Years is an anthology of free-verse poetry representing the past of a shocking imaginary future. Offering a glimpse into how this hypothetical future without sexual reproduction, oil, fertile farmland, or even the virtue of love came to be, To Be Read in 500 Years is as much cautionary tale as it is evolving poetic narrative. "How Simile Works": The drizzle-slicked cobblestone alleys / of some city; / and the brickwork back / of the lumbering Galapagos tortoise / they'd set me astride, at the "petting zoo".... // The taste of our squabbles still in my mouth / the next day; / and the brackish puddles sectioning / the street one morning after a storm.... // So poetry configures its comparisons.