The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007

"Albert Goldbarth is . . . a contemporary genius with the language itself . . . There is simply no contemporary poet like him." --David Baker, The Kenyon Review
 

overhead turned on. Now nothing else existed:
only him, and the book, and the light thrown over his shoulders
as luxuriously as a cashmere shawl.
                                                      --from "Shawl"

 

Albert Goldbarth has created an unmistakable signature style--learned, copious, hilarious, and heartbreaking--which has so far spanned an award-winning career of thirty-five years. The Kitchen Sink brings together forty new poems with a rich selection of earlier poetry, ranging from the brief, flickering lyric to the long, narrative sequence. In both forms, Goldbarth exerts a wild showmanship and an ever-widening scope to illustrate the complex character and interconnectedness of humanity, history, and art. The Kitchen Sink is the definitive book by one of America's most original and entertaining poets.