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: 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

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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