TROUBLED LOVERS IN HISTORY: A SEQUENCE OF POEMS [Hardcover]

ALBERT GOLDBARTH (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1999

Troubled Lovers in History demonstrates an exhilarating range: from the briefest of lyrics to rich and multipartite narrative adventures in exotic realms; from a comic ditsy monologue spoken in immigrant "Yinglish" to a soulful elegy set in San Antonio's Pearl Beer brewery plant; from Martian invaders, through polar explorers, to all of us busy inflicting "words with edges" on those we love. Goldbarth sets his unflinching study of individual hope and grief against the backdrop of history: the travels of Marco Polo; Bertha and Wilhelm Rontgen's discovery of X-rays; an 1800 battle "twixt Dragon Sam, the great Exhaler of Gouts of Amazing Flame ... and Liquid Dan, the Living Geyser."

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Prolific poet Goldbarth (Adventures in Ancient Egypt, LJ 12/96; Beyond, Godine, 1998) presents an eccentric and pleasing cycle of poems about the relationships between lovers and between parent and child. Goldbarth's sensibility is one of the few that deserves to be called cinematic: he works like an avant-garde filmmaker, with the verbal-aesthetic equivalents of jump-cut editing and the hand-held camera. Amusing wherever they are not startling, Goldbarth's superbly intelligent poems change directions at top speed: "There's an airplane in the skies, from somewhere/ out of poetic eternitime, it hides/ between the couplets...and deposits/ a microsurveillance device in one of those alpenroses/ you read about. Yes you/ Ayou're being watched." Goldbarth is a comic and compelling poet. Recommended for all poetry collections.AGraham Christian, Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, MA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Generations: 'duo Tried Killing Man With Bacon'
Generations: ***!!!the Battle Of The Century!!!***
Generations: Con Carne
Generations: The Fiction Shelf
More Trouble With Pleasant Interludes: Alternative Uses
More Trouble With Pleasant Interludes: Directional
More Trouble With Pleasant Interludes: Dog, Fish, Shoes (or Beans)
More Trouble With Pleasant Interludes: In The Bar In The Bar
More Trouble With Pleasant Interludes: Squash And Stone
More Trouble With Pleasant Interludes: Substream
More Trouble With Pleasant Interludes: The Lost Continent (1951)
More Trouble With Pleasant Interludes: True
More Trouble With Pleasant Interludes: Two Weeks, With Polo Chorus
More Trouble With Pleasant Interludes: Various Ulia
More Trouble With Pleasant Interludes: What We're Used To
Natural History: 1
Natural History: 2
Natural History: 3
Natural History: 4
Natural History: 5
Travel Notes: Finish
Travel Notes: Introductory Section
Travel Notes: Introductory Section: 1
Travel Notes: Introductory Section: 2
Travel Notes: Introductory Section: 3
Trouble, With Pleasant Interludes: 'of Course They're Strangers ...'
Trouble, With Pleasant Interludes: Against
Trouble, With Pleasant Interludes: Ancestored-back ...
Trouble, With Pleasant Interludes: Complete With Starry Night ...
Trouble, With Pleasant Interludes: Imps
Trouble, With Pleasant Interludes: In
Trouble, With Pleasant Interludes: The Number Of Utterly Alien ...
Trouble, With Pleasant Interludes: There, Too
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 136 pages
• Publisher: Ohio State University Press; 1 edition (January 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814208134
• ISBN-13: 978-0814208137
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,513,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars more superb Goldbarth, August 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: TROUBLED LOVERS IN HISTORY: A SEQUENCE OF POEMS (Paperback)

Goldbarth is one of a handful of contemporary poets worth reading. This book is a pleasure -- no surprise there.

5.0 out of 5 stars Meditations on Miscellanea, July 28, 2001

By 

Judy Lightfoot (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: TROUBLED LOVERS IN HISTORY: A SEQUENCE OF POEMS (Paperback)

... Goldbarth's "Troubled Lovers in History" is a hilarious, often touching meditation on the failure of his marriage. Like scientists seeking a Supertheory for random events, husband and wife wanted a curative Grand Explanation of their woes, and these poems gather Goldbarth's miscellaneous data from a wild ransacking of pre-history, post-Einsteinian hyperspace, Lin Foo's Chinese Carryout, and an old theory that an element called septon is the cause of cancer, leprosy, scurvy, and ringworm.

He finds some patterns. Thanks to Wilhelm and Bertha Roentgen's discovery of X-rays, Goldbarth sees into the Roentgens' marriage and concludes that everyone (especially one's spouse) has a weird, secret beauty. Scenes from a contemporary couple's first try at cohabitation alternate with snippets from Marco Polo on Chinese practices "which are not our way," "which we do not do here" - one of the lovers is learning that the other is actually a complete foreigner. But no partner is more mystifying than oneself, when "every 'me' has a zip-out not-me lining."

So, not surprisingly, surprises pop up everywhere. Consider the diamond-string-like pupil of a gecko's eye, consider trompe l'oeil art, neurosurgery, beer - consider Cousin Deedee! No wonder the ancient writer Pliny believed in a mouthless race of people nourished by fragrances. No wonder we believe our marriage might survive "and stars will sing of this / to starfish, in the language that they share / because they share a shape." Goldbarth yanks us right into his brilliant, encyclopedic streams of compulsive talk. Like Pliny, he'll "feed us any gee-whiz scrap of balderdash / and he won't go away," and I, for one, am glad.

5.0 out of 5 stars "Meditations on Miscellanea", July 28, 2001

By 

Judy Lightfoot (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: TROUBLED LOVERS IN HISTORY: A SEQUENCE OF POEMS (Paperback)

Goldbarth's "Troubled Lovers in History" is a hilarious, often touching meditation on the failure of his marriage. Like scientists seeking a Supertheory for random events, husband and wife wanted a curative Grand Explanation of their woes, and these poems gather Goldbarth's miscellaneous data from a wild ransacking of pre-history, post-Einsteinian hyperspace, Lin Foo's Chinese Carryout, and an old theory that an element called septon is the cause of cancer, leprosy, scurvy, and ringworm.

He finds some patterns. Thanks to Wilhelm and Bertha Röntgen's discovery of X-rays, Goldbarth sees into the Röntgens' marriage and concludes that everyone (especially one's spouse) has a weird, secret beauty. Scenes from a contemporary couple's first try at cohabitation alternate with snippets from Marco Polo on Chinese practices "which are not our way," "which we do not do here" - one of the lovers is learning that the other is actually a complete foreigner. But no partner is more mystifying than oneself, when "every 'me' has a zip-out not-me lining."

So, not surprisingly, surprises pop up everywhere. Consider the diamond-string-like pupil of a gecko's eye, consider trompe l'oeil art, neurosurgery, beer - consider Cousin Deedee! No wonder the ancient writer Pliny believed in a mouthless race of people nourished by fragrances. No wonder we believe our marriage might survive "and stars will sing of this / to starfish, in the language that they share / because they share a shape." Goldbarth yanks us right into his brilliant, encyclopedic streams of compulsive talk. Like Pliny, he'll "feed us any gee-whiz scrap of balderdash / and he won't go away," and I, for one, am glad.