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Albert Goldbarth Quotes

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow, Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle, Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town and History says:

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow, Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle, Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town and History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

Albert Goldbarth
Night, Rainbow, Psychology
Albert Goldbarth (1991). “Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology : Poems”, p.118, University of Georgia Press

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you're tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance inside themselves without you.

Albert Goldbarth
Tired, Sleep, Shoes
Albert Goldbarth (1991). “Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology : Poems”, p.118, University of Georgia Press

I don't spend time thinking about an aesthetic out of which I create or an ideal toward which my body of work is heading. It's amazing, when I read interviews with other poets, to see how articulately they discuss their own writing, as if they were sharing long-held theories on the work of Pope or Keats. I'm happy enough that I've poured the best of myself into the poems themselves.

Albert Goldbarth
Writing, Thinking, Long
Source: muse.jhu.edu

I hope any poem I've ever written could stand on its own and not need to be a part of biography, critical theory or cultural studies. I don't want to give a poetry reading and have to provide the story behind the poem in order for it to make sense to an audience. I certainly don't want the poem to require a critical intermediary - a "spokescritic." I want my poems to be independently meaningful moments of power for a good reader. And that's the expectation I initially bring to other poets' writing.

Albert Goldbarth
Meaningful, Reading, Writing
Source: muse.jhu.edu

If you agree with me that a poem can be as bountiful as a rich Victorian narrative, and as wise... then you'll want to join me here in the Wow, I Like No Need of Sympathy Club. Your membership fee is the same as your membership privileges: this book.

Albert Goldbarth
Wise, Book, Needs

Perhaps you have seen me. I know well, my purpose was merely that of a symbol, 'equals', 'times'... ; but what is said, for all that, was identity-less: a kind of live geometry.

Albert Goldbarth
Science, Identity, Purpose

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