POPULAR CULTURE (OSU JOURNAL AWARD POETRY) - Softcover

"Nothing/ stops the ductile reach of our needing-to-know," says Goldbarth ( Arts & Sciences: Poems, LJ 10/15/86). Combining erudition and wordplay in a blend of self, science, and speculation, Goldbarth here muses on artifacts of popular culture: comic books (Donald Duck), detective fiction (Sherlock Holmes), television and radio shows ( Cheyenne and Captain Midnight ), comic strips ("Little Orphan Annie"), pop music (The Shangri-las), science fiction (Meteor Man), cheap novelties (exploding cigars), and publicity (Miss Styrofoam). Overlayered with nuggets of disparate lore and personal anecdotes, Goldbarth's collage technique assumes that knowledge is fused into a "multiverse" through "junkheap" words' syncretic force: "The words we save/ are the words we save everything else in." When these allusive poetic viewgraphs manage to coalesce, Goldbarth's work has the energy and excitement of a Browning monolog.
- Frank Allen, Regents Coll., Albany, N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Goldbarth ( Jan. 31 ) here infuses the gewgaws of pop culture--from science fiction to rock 'n' roll--with fresh energy and wit. Writing from the point of view of a boy-man narrator whose father's death has prompted him to relive special moments of childhood, the poet tackles difficult issues, juxtaposing biography and culture by often circuitous routes. In "Again," Goldbarth weaves back and forth between images of his father's death, the break-up of both his marriage and that of a friend, a nurse's longing for her estranged husband, the meaning of pain, and war-torn Japan. Trenchant observations abound in these long serial poems, though Goldbarth's run-on sentences and nonchronological time schemes can appear convoluted, and some poems may stymie the reader with madcap philosophizing.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.