Heaven and earth : a cosmology : poems
by Albert Goldbarth
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Focusing with equal energy at the imposing sky and at our own home planet, Albert Goldbarth moves from hosannah-choiring angels to a single peach pit glistening on the tongue of Madame Renoir, from the sweep of the earth's ecocycles to the particles of quantum physics. In these poems surgeons, lovers, astronauts, psychiatrists, and priests embark on the same far journey, traveling into the universe of what it means to be human, exploring "how the world works." Here, the ancient Egyptian show more afterlife and the atrocities of the 10 o'clock news, the realm of guacamole chip dip and the life of Rembrandt mix toward one cohesive vision. show lessTags
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45+ Works 665 Members
Born in Chicago and educated at the University of Illinois and University of Iowa, Goldbarth has taught at various schools, including the University of Texas. Prolific and wide-ranging in content, Goldbarth writes against the grain of much contemporary poetry, which aims to strip language to its barest essentials. His verse, by contrast, is show more baroque, florid, even---as his critics would have it---cluttered. The effect of his virtuoso verbal performance is to suggest how intensely is the human need for explanation and connection with the vast storehouse of culture within which we live. In his recent works, Goldbarth has pursued his theory that life is a Moebius strip, continually repeating itself, with no discernible beginning or end. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Canonical title
- Heaven and earth : a cosmology : poems
- Original publication date
- 1991
- Dedication
- for Skyler—
not that all of these poems are autobiographical,
but that you're somewhere in all of my poems - First words
- A woman "heard angels." The papers say angels sussurra'd her body, rang their praises daylong through its reedy places, stirred her smallest water.
- Quotations
- The sky has opened. Out of it, as large as temple-gongs yet floating as easily as snowflakes, pour transistor circuits, maps of topiaries, cattle brands, IUDs, the floorplans of stockades, cartouches, hibachi grills, lacy doi... (show all)lywork, horsecollars, laboratory mouse-mazes, brain-impressions, all of it sketching the air like a show of translucent kites in blacks and reds...
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town and History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.
- Blurbers
- Vendler, Helen; Finkel, Donald; Kumin, Maxine; Oates, Joyce Carol
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- Languages
- English
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- ISBNs
- 2





















































